Henry Taylor Quotes

His foodWas glory, which was poison to his mindAnd peril to his body.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

Of all the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love.

When you give, therefore, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.

Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love.

A secret may be sometimes best kept by keeping the secret of its being a secret. It is not many years since a State secret of the greatest importance was printed without being divulged, merely by sending it to the press like any other matter, and trusting to the mechanical habits of the persons employed. They printed it piecemeal in ignorance of what it was about.

No siren did ever so charm the ear of the listener as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the siren.

I have not skillFrom such a sharp and waspish word as "No"To pluck the sting.

Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.

We figure to ourselves The thing we like; and then we build it up, As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,- For thought is tired of wandering o'er the world, And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.

If you know how a man deals with his money, how he gets it, spends it, keeps it, shares it, you know one of the most important things about him.

Shy and proud men are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.

Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets, for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.

The philosophy which affects to teach us a contempt of money does not run very deep; for, indeed, it ought to be still more clear to the philosopher than it is to ordinary men, that there are few things in the world of greater importance.

The art of living easily as to money is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one; it comes of a weak craving for those blandishments of the world which are easily to be had for money, and which, when obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a harlot's love is worse than none.

...and for that they were rich,/And robbed the poor; and for that they were strong,/And scourged the weak; and for that they made laws/Which turned the sweat of labor's brow to blood! - /For these their sins the nations cast them out.

Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight.

There is no such test of a man's superiority of character as in the well-conducting of an unavoidable quarrel.

He who gives only what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.