William Rounseville Alger Quotes - Page 2

Tears are the tribute of humanity to its destiny.

Of all the portions of life it is in the two twilights, childhood and age, that tears fall with the most frequency; like the dew at dawn and eve.

Ah, could the soul, like the body, have a mirror! It has,--a friend.

The human heart has a sigh lonelier than the cry of the bittern.

Public opinion is a second conscience.

A sigh can shatter a castle in the air.

Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind.

To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it.

Laws are the silent assessors of God.

Words of love are works of love.

Cunning is the dwarf of wisdom.

God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe.

The lower a man descends in his love, the higher he lifts his life.

Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation Which rises from the cup of mad impiety, And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication Which is more sober far than all sobriety.

In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast.

A fretful fancy is constantly flinging its possessor into gratuitous tophets.

There is one thing diviner than duty, namely, the bond of obligation transmuted into liberty.

The heart must glow before the tongue can gild.

The God of merely traditional believers is the great Absentee of the universe.

Nemesis is one of God's handmaids.

Reserve may be pride fortified in ice; dignity is worth reposing on truth.

Polite beggary is too common.

Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.

True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be.