Will Christian
Will Christian
beauty delight mortals
Mortal beauty stings while it delights.
disappointment party earth
A particular disappointment is seldom more than an excrescence upon the trunk of a general good--a shower that spoils the pleasure party, but refreshes and enriches the earth.
five-senses importance duty
Besides the five senses, there is a sixth sense, of equal importance--the sense of duty.
knowing evil desire
I desire to go through life knowing as little of evil in it as possible. To this end, I sometimes avoid looking too closely into the nature of things, studying them only so far as they seem to be good, and abandoning interest in them as soon as their darker feature begin to appear. The good only deserves a hearty interest.
men numbers facts
It is not the number of facts he knows, but how much of a fact he is himself, that proves the man.
data errors world
To no circumstance is the wide diffusion of error in the world more owing than to our habit of adopting conclusions from insufficiently established data. An indispensable preliminary, then, in every investigation, is to get at facts. Until these are arrived at, every opinion, theory, or system, however ingeniously framed, must necessarily rest upon an uncertain basis.
gratitude favors
We absolve a friend from gratitude when we remind him of a favor.
hero development elements
Elements of the heroic exist in almost every individual: it is only the felicitous development of them all in one that is rare.
fancy prejudice may
Even when we fancy we have grown wiser, it is only, it may be, that new prejudices have displaced old ones.
men tunnels light
How like a railway tunnel is the poor man's life, with the light of childhood at one end, the intermediate gloom, and only the glimmer of a future life at the other extremity!
past emotion
The past is the sepulchre of our dead emotions.
art simple needs
The language of the heart--the language which "comes from the heart" and "goes to the heart"--is always simple, always graceful, and always full of power, but no art of rhetoric can teach it. It is at once the easiest and most difficult language--difficult, since it needs a heart to speak it; easy, because its periods though rounded and full of harmony, are still unstudied.
opinion misanthropy evidence
The opinions of the misanthropical rest upon this very partial basis, that they adopt the bad faith of a few as evidence of the worthlessness of all.
may merit recognition
The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.