COLLECTION OF
QUOTATIONS
ON THE INTERNET
|
|
THE MOST EXTENSIVE COLLECTION OF QUOTATIONS ON THE INTERNET |
| Home | Biographical Index | Reading List | Search | Site Notes | Varying Hare Books | | |||
| GIGA Quotes | Quotes by Topic | Authors by Date | | |||
A work of art is said to be perfect in proportion as it does not remind the spectator of the process by which it was created. - [Art] Credulity is perhaps a weakness almost inseparable from eminently truthful characters. - [Credulity] Do not give to thy friends the most agreeable counsels, but the most advantageous. - [Advice] Explain it as we may, a martial strain will urge a man into the front rank of battle sooner than an argument, and a fine anthem excite his devotion more certainly than a logical discourse. - [Music] Fashion seldom interferes with nature without diminishing her grace and efficiency. - [Fashion] If conversation be an art, like painting, sculpture, and literature, it owes its most power charm to nature; and the least shade of formality or artifice destroys the effect of the best collection of words. - [Conversation] It is amusing to detect character in the vocabulary of each person. The adjectives habitually used, like the inscriptions on a thermometer, indicate the temperament. - [Character] Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace. - [Novels] Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment. - [Enthusiasm] Literature is so common a luxury that the age has grown fastidious. - [Literature] No man flatters the woman he truly loves. - [Flattery] Professed authors who overestimate their vocation are too full of themselves to be agreeable companions. The demands of their egotism are inveterate. They seem to be incapable of that abandon which is the requisite condition of social pleasure; and bent upon winning a tribute of admiration, or some hint which they can turn to the account of pen-craft, there is seldom in their company any of the delightful unconsciousness which harmonizes a circle. - [Authorship] The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. - [Eyes] The French have a significant saying, that a woman who buys her complexion will sell it. - [Frailty] The man who becomes a critic by trade ceases, in reality, to be one at all. - [Critics] The mind's only perfect vassal. - [Hand] The soul, by an instinct stronger than reason, ever associates beauty with truth. - [Beauty] There are beauties of character which, like the night-blooming cereus, are closed against the glare and turbulence of every-day life, and bloom only in shade and solitude, and beneath the quiet stars. - [Character] There is a strength of quiet endurance as significant of courage as the most daring feats of prowess. - [Fortitude] There is more or less of pathos in all true beauty. The delight it awakens has an indefinable, and, as it were, luxurious sadness, which is perhaps one element of its might. - [Beauty] There is to the poetical sense a ravishing prophecy and winsome intimation in flowers that now and then, from the influence of mood of circumstance, reasserts itself like the reminiscence of childhood, or the spell of love. - [Flowers] To analyze the charms of flowers is like dissecting music; it is one of those things which it is far better to enjoy than to attempt to understand. - [Flowers] We read of a fountain in Arabia upon whose basin is inscribed, "Drink, and away;" but how delicious is that hasty draught, and how long and brightly the thought of its transient refreshment dwells in the memory. - [Abstinence] Whatever is genuine in social relations endures, despite of time, error, absence, and destiny; and that which has no inherent vitality had better die at once. A great poet has truly declared that constancy is no virtue, but a fact. - [Constancy] Whoever has set his whole heart upon book-making had better be sought in his works, for it is only the lees of his cup of life which he offers, in person, to the warm lips of his fellows. - [Authorship] Displaying page 1 of 2 for this author: Next >> [1] 2
|
|
