Will Christian
Will Christian
kindness children flower
Words of praise, indeed, are almost as necessary to warm a child into a genial life as acts of kindness and affection. Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.
men good-man overcoming
Good men have the fewest fears. He has but one great fear who fears to do wrong; he has a thousand who has overcome it.
happiness insecure age
Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.
nature character men
All men are alike in their lower natures; it is in their higher characters that they differ.
gratitude melancholy worst
Melancholy sees the worst of things...[rather than the best]
gratitude evil lessons
It is some compensation for great evils, that they enforce great lessons.
inspirational honesty greatness
Honesty is not only the first step toward greatness, it is greatness itself.
book mind
Books are embalmed minds.
flower feelings letters
A profusion of fancies and quotations is out of place in a love-letter. True feeling is always direct, and never deviates into by-ways to cull flowers of rhetoric.
book style add
Luminous quotations, also, atone, by their interest, for the dulness of an inferior book, and add to the value of a superior work by the variety which they lend to its style and treatment.
believe writing men
It is safer to quote what is written than what is spoken. What a man writes it is fair to presume he believes as a matter of general conviction, but it is not so with what he utters in the freedom of conversation. In that he may only express the feeling of the moment, and not his settled judgment, or matured opinion.
next firsts merit
A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.
beautiful appreciation profound
To quote copiously and well, requires taste, judgment, and erudition, a feeling for the beautiful, an appreciation of the noble, and a sense of the profound.
iron negativity feelings
Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.