If you are born without taste, acquire it.
Men acquire acuteness; women are born with it.
It is easier to avoid a fault than acquire perfection. [ Proverb ]
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure.
The dread of censure is the death of genius. [ Simms ]
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. [ Ward Beecher ]
Care may acquire wealth, which, when acquired, care must guard and worry about. [ Quesnel ]
The fame of great men ought always to be estimated by the means used to acquire it. [ La Rochefoucauld ]
Those who cannot themselves observe can at least acquire the observation of others. [ Beaconsfield ]
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave than to expend it like a gentleman. [ Colton ]
Free people, remember this rule: you may acquire liberty, but never regain it if you once lose it. [ Rousseau ]
To acquire a few tongues is the labor of a few years; but to be eloquent in one is the labor of life. [ Anonymous ]
All that is enviable is not bought: love, genius, beauty, are divine gifts that the richest cannot acquire. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]
The error of certain women is to imagine that, to acquire distinction, they must imitate the manners of men. [ J. de Maistre ]
We wish others to possess, or to acquire, all the qualities and virtues that can serve our pleasures or interests. [ De Finod ]
Nature is upheld by antagonism. Passions, resistance, danger, are educators. We acquire the strength we have overcome. [ Emerson ]
Garments will fall to pieces, jewels and gold will lose something of their lustre, but the fame that great poems acquire will last through all time. [ Ovid ]
The term intellect
includes all those powers by which we acquire, retain, and extend our knowledge; as perception, memory, imagination, judgment, and the like. [ William Fleming ]
The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable. [ Joseph Roux ]
So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other. [ Johnson ]
Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive. [ Colton ]
The way to acquire lasting esteem is not by the fewness of a writer's faults, but the greatness of his beauties, and our noblest works are generally most replete with both. [ Goldsmith ]
Those who are too idle to read, save for the purpose of amusement, may in these works acquire some acquaintance with history, which, however inaccurate, is better than none. [ Sir Walter Scott ]
Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are out of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire. [ Sir J. Reynolds ]
There are many arts among men, the knowledge of which is acquired bit by bit by experience. For it is experience that causes our life to move forward by the skill we acquire, while want of experience subjects us to the effects of chance. [ Plato ]
Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while. [ Emerson ]
Who can describe the transports of a heart truly parental on beholding a daughter shoot up like some fair and modest flower, and acquire, day after day, fresh beauty and growing sweetness, so as to fill every eye with pleasure and every heart with admiration? [ Fordyce ]
It is in the time of trouble, when some to whom we may have looked for consolation and encouragement regard us with coldness, and others, perhaps, treat us with hostility, that the warmth of the friendly heart and the support of the friendly hand acquire increased value and demand additional gratitude. [ Bishop Mant ]
We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success. [ G. A. Sala ]