C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Henry Home
A great mind will neither give an affront nor bear it.
An agreeable figure and winning manner, which inspire affection without love, are always new. Beauty loses its relish, the graces never, after the longest acquaintance, they are no less agreeable than at first.
An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong.
Beauty is a dangerous property, tending to corrupt the mind of the wife, though it soon loses its influence over the husband. A figure agreeable and engaging, which inspires affection, without the ebriety of love, is a much safer choice.
Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.
Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. Behold us already more than half dead and buried.
Even dress is apt to inflame a man’s opinion of himself.
Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes.
Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.
If you should escape the censure of others, hope not to escape your own.
Luxury possibly may contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury there would be no poor.
Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.
No man ever did a designed injury to another without doing a greater to himself.
Nothing more excites to everything noble and generous than virtuous love.
Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.
Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.
Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.
Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.
Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession.
The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.
The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.
The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
The sordid meal of the Cynics contributed neither to their tranquillity nor to their modesty. Pride went with Diogenes into his tub; and there he had the presumption to command Alexander the haughtiest of all men.
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.
Were wisdom to be sold, she would give no price; every man is satisfied with the share he has from nature.
When interest is at variance with conscience, any distinction to make them friends will serve the hollow hearted.
When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.
Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.
Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.