C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Rivarol
A fool may have his coat embroidered with gold, but it is a fool’s coat still.
Axioms are delightful in theory, but impossible in practice.
Brave men do not boast nor bluster. Deeds, not words, speak for such.
Extremes produce reaction. Beware that our boasted civilization does not lapse into barbarism.
Gold, like the sun, which melts wax and hardens clay, expands great souls and contracts bad hearts.
Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of water.
History is only time furnished with dates and rich with events.
If poverty makes man groan, he yawns in opulence. When fortune exempts us from labor, nature overwhelms us with time.
In general, indulgence for those we know is rarer than pity for those we know not.
Indolence and stupidity are first cousins.
It has been very truly said that the mob has many heads, but no brains.
It is a notable circumstance that mothers who are themselves open to severe comments as to their moral character, are generally most solicitous as to the virtuous behavior of their daughters.
It is not he who searches for praise who finds it.
It is said that friendship between women is only a suspension of hostilities.
It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.
Mind is the partial side of men; the heart is everything.
Mutability is written upon all things.
Oblivion is the rule, and fame the exception, of humanity.
Obtuseness is sometimes a virtue.
Opinions, theories, and systems pass by turns over the grindstone of time, which at first gives them brilliancy and sharpness, but finally wears them out.
Poverty treads close upon the heels of great and unexpected wealth.
Reason is an historian, but the passions are actors.
Rumor, once started, rushes on like a river, until it mingles with, and is lost in the sea.
Silence never yet betrayed any one!
Speech is external thought, and thought internal speech.
Speech is the vestment of thought, and expression its armor.
Tenderness is the infancy of love.
That which happens to the soil when it ceases to be cultivated by the social man happens to man himself when he foolishly forsakes society for solitude; the brambles grow up in his desert heart.
The cunning tempter, by avoiding the grossness of vice, often silences objections.
The despotism of will in ideas is styled plan, project, character, obstinacy; its despotism in desires is called passion.
The mischief of children is seldom actuated by malice; that of grown-up people always is.
The modest man has everything to gain, and the arrogant man everything to lose; for modesty has always to deal with generosity, and arrogance with envy.
The monuments of mutability.
The most civilized people are as near to barbarism as the most polished steel is to rust. Nations, like metals, have only a superficial brilliancy.
The personal pronoun “I” should be the coat of arms of some individuals.
The stampede of our self-possession.
The subtle sauce of malice is often indulged in by maidens of uncertain age, over their tea.
The woman who has too easily and ardently yielded her devotion will find that its vitality, like a bright fire, soon consumes itself.
The world is governed by love,—self-love.
There are some women who are flirts upon principle; they consider it their duty to make themselves as pleasing as possible to every one.
There is even the dignity of vice.
There is nothing so unready as readiness of wit.
To be ungrateful is to be unnatural. The head may be thus guilty, not the heart.
To lose one’s self in revery, one must be either very happy or very unhappy. Revery is the child of extreme.
True felicity consists of its own consciousness.
Vices are often habits rather than passions.
Women read each other at a single glance.
Wrong is wrong; no fallacy can hide it, no subterfuge cover it so shrewdly but that the All-Seeing One will discover and punish it.
Youth is not the era of wisdom; let us therefore have due consideration.