Augustus William Hare Quotes

There are men whom you will never dislodge from an opinion, except by taking possession of it yourself.

If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres and white-plumed helmets.

What a type of happy family is the family of the Sun! With what order, with what harmony, with what blessed peace, do his children the planets move around him, shining with light which they drink in from their parent's in at once upon him and on one another!

A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely.

Practical life teaches us that people may differ and that both may be wrong: it also teaches us that people may differ and both be right. Anchor yourself fast in the latter faith, or the former will sweep your heart away.

Mythology is not religion. It may rather be regarded as the ancient substitute, the poetical counterpart, for dogmatic theology.

Forms and regularity of proceeding, if they are not justice, partake much of the nature of justice, which, in its highest sense, is the spirit of distributive order.

How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts when we are surprised to find our prayers answered.

Many men spend their lives in gazing at their own shadows, and so dwindle away into shadows thereof.

Leaves are light, and useless, and idle, and wavering, and changeable; they even dance; and yet God in his wisdom has made them a part of oaks. And in so doing he has given us a lesson, not to deny the stout-heartedness within because we see the lightsomeness without.

We like slipping, but not falling; our real anxiety is to be tempted enough.

I was surprised just now at seeing a cobweb around a knocker; for it was not on the door of heaven.

When will talkers refrain from evil speaking: when listeners refrain from evil-hearing.

Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.

Philosophy is the love of wisdom: Christianity is the wisdom of love.

We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness.

Few take advice, or physic, without wry faces at it.

Instead of watching the bird as it flies above our heads, we chase his shadow along the ground; and, finding we cannot grasp it, we conclude it to be nothing.

It is said that Windham, when he came to the end of a speech, often found himself so perplexed by his own subtlety that he hardly knew which way he was going to give his vote. This is a good illustration of the fallaciousness of reasoning, and of the uncertainties which attend its practical application.

Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necromancy,--by consulting the oracular dead.

Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot.

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.

The cross was two pieces of dead wood; and a helpless, unresisting Man was nailed to it; yet it was mightier than the world, and triumphed, and will ever triumph over it.

When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she does not at once expose herself impudently to the public gaze; but for a time remains veiled in a transparent cloud, till she gradually acquires courage to endure the looks and admiration of beholders.

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.