James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
J. M. Barrie
He’s looking for the blade o’ corn in the stack o’ chaff.
I would condone many things in one-and-twenty now, that I dealt hardly with at middle age. God Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty a second chance.
If you would cease to dislike a man, try to get nearer his heart.
It’s a weary warld, and naebody bides in’t.
Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy; even love unreturned has its rainbow.
Life is a long lesson in humility.
Life is a wrestle with the devil, and only the frivolous think to throw him without taking off their coats.
Like an old woman at her hearth, we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots, and each thinks his own fire a sun in presence of which all other fires should go out.
Love is not blind; it is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy of regard.
Love is the joining of two souls on their way to God.
Man’s second childhood begins when a woman gets hold of him.
No heart opens to sympathy without letting in delicacy.
No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to love, for then God has her by the hand.
Not to attempt a gallant deed for which one has the impulse may be braver than the doing of it.
Nothing can overtake an untruth if it has a minute’s start.
“Shalls” and “wills.” Never trust a Scotch man or woman who does not come to grief among them.
Steps vary as much as the human face.
Strength, instead of being the lusty child of passions, grows by grappling with and throwing them.
Take a stick to a Highland laddie, and it’s no him you hurt, but his ancestors.
Temper—a weapon that we hold by the blade.
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.
The most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high.
The praise that comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather.
The useless men are those who never change with the years.
The wind that has its nest in trees.
The world does not progress so quickly as a man grows old.
The young talk generously of relieving the old of their burdens, but the anxious heart is to the old when they see a load on the back of the young.
There’s no folk sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.
There’s things it’s best to put off kenning as long as we can.
Those who bring sunshine to the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
Those who only run after little things will not go far.
To doubt is to dip love in the mire.
To see the best is to see most clearly, and it is the lover’s privilege.
We are children for the second time at twenty-one, and again when we are grey and put all our burden on the Lord.
We seldom give our love to what is worthiest in its object.
We should be slower to think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in our company.
What have not you men to answer for who talk of love to a woman when her face is all you know of her, and her passions, her aspirations, are for kissing to sleep, her very soul a plaything?
When men add a new wing to their house they do not call the action virtue, but if they give to a fellow-creature for their own gratification, they demand of God a good mark for it.
You canna expect to be baith grand and comfortable.