Arthur Helps Quotes

If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.

The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct betray his opinion of your character.

Men of much depth of mind can bear a great deal of counsel; for it does not easily deface their own character, nor render their purposes indistinct.

The worst use that can be made of success is to boast of it.

Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

He who is continually changing his point of view sees more, and more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.

Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.

Simple ignorance has in its time been complimented by the names of most of the vices, and of all the virtues.

A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion.

Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.

There is an honesty which is but decided selfishness in disguise. The person who will not refrain from expressing his or her sentiments and manifesting his or her feelings, however unfit the time, however inappropriate the place, however painful this expression may be, lays claim, forsooth, to our approbation as an honest person, and sneers at those of finer sensibilities as hypocrites.

Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.

No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.

More than half the difficulties of the world would be allayed or removed by the exhibition of good temper.

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

Wisdom is seldom gained without suffering.

Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.

People resemble still more the time in which they live, than they resemble their fathers.

What a blessing this smoking is! Perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America.

Tolerance is the only real test of civilization.

Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers

It is in length of patience, endurance and forbearance that so much of what is good in mankind and womankind is shown.

There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.

Offended vanity is the great separator in social life.

The sense of danger is never, perhaps, so fully apprehended as when the danger has been overcome.

Most terrors are but spectral illusions. Only have the courage of the man who could walk up to his spectre seated in the chair before him, and sit down upon it; the horrid thing will not partake the chair with you.

Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.

The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.

Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.

Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.

The thing which makes one man greater than another, the quality by which we ought to measure greatness, is a man's capacity for loving.

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?

An official man is always an official man, and has a wild belief in the value of Reports.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.

The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.

No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.

Be cheerful [and grateful for the good that you have]: do not brood over fond hopes unrealized until a chain is fastened on each thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.

The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance.

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

To hear always, to think always, to learn always, it is thus that we live truly. He who aspires to nothing, who learns nothing, is not worthy of living.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.