Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Earl of Shaftesbury

True courage has so little to do with anger, that there lies always the strongest suspicion against it, where this passion is highest. True courage is cool and calm. The bravest of men have the least of a brutal bullying insolence, and in the very time of danger are found the most serene, pleasant, and free. Rage, we know, can make a coward forget himself and fight. But what is done in fury or anger can never be placed to the account of courage.

’Tis necessary a writing critic should understand how to write. And though every writer is not bound to show himself in the capacity of critic, every writing critic is bound to show himself capable of being a writer; for if he be apparently impotent in this latter kind, he is to be denied all title or character in the other.

The greatest of fools is he who imposes on himself, and in his greatest concern thinks certainly he knows that which he has least studied, and of which he is most profoundly ignorant.

The taste of beauty, and the relish of what is decent, just, and amiable, perfects the character of the gentleman.

To love the public, to study universal good, and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as lies within our power, is the height of goodness, and makes that temper which we call divine.

Never did any soul do good, but it came readier to do the same again, with more enjoyment. Never was love or gratitude or bounty practised, but with increasing joy, which made the practiser still more in love with the fair act.

Horace either is, or feigns himself, lymphatic, and shows what an effect the vision of the Nymphs and Bacchus had on him.

The heart cannot possibly remain neutral, but constantly takes part one way or the other.

In nature, all is managed for the best, with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything.

A good piece, the painters say, must have good muscling, as well as colouring and drapery.

One of those principal lights or natural mediums by which things are to be viewed, in order to thorough recognition, is ridicule itself, or that manner of proof by which we discern whatever is liable to just raillery in any subject.