C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Taine
Change a virtue in its circumstances and it becomes a vice; change a vice in its circumstances and it becomes a virtue. Regard the same quality from two sides; on one it is a fault, on the other a merit. The essential of a man is found concealed far below these moral badges.
Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire; our ordinary life borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.
Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every-day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross.
The beauty of a plastic work is, above all, plastic; and an art always degenerates when, discarding its own peculiar means for exciting interest, it borrows those of another art.
There are four varieties in society—the lovers, the ambitious, observers, and fools. The fools are the happiest.
To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.