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Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising. - [Superstition] That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose. - [Extravagance] That is, in a great degree, true of all men, which was said of the Athenians, that they were like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one. - [Public] The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire. - [Motive] The best security against revolution is in constant correction of abuses and introduction of needed improvements. It is the neglect of timely repair that makes rebuilding necessary. - [Revolution] The censure of frequent and long parentheses has led writers into the preposterous expedient of leaving out the marks by which they are indicated. It is no cure to a lame man to take away his crutches. - [Style] The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself. - [Indifference] The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless. - [Amusements] The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity. - [Style] The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it. - [Birth] The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true; it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity. - [Mythology] The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive. - [Admiration] The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it. - [Error] The power of duly appreciating little things belongs to a great mind; a narrow-minded man has it not, for to him they are great things. - [Trifles] The relief that is afforded to mere want, as want, tends to increase that want. - [Want] The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error. - [Party : Politics] There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true. - [Truth] They never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises or wrong inferences from correct premises; and they always poke the fire from the top. - [Women] Those who relish the study of character may profit by the reading of good works of fiction, the product of well-established authors. - [Fiction] Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves. - [Self-examination] To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; because the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself. - [Manners] To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another. - [Tradition] Trust, therefore, for the overcoming of a difficulty, not to long-continued study after you have once become bewildered, but to repeated trials at intervals. - [Study] Unless the people can be kept in total darkness, it is the wisest way for the advocates of truth to give them full light. - [Education] Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on. - [Vice] Displaying page 4 of 5 for this author: << Prev Next >> 1 2 3 [4] 5
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