Love is the piety of the affections. [ Theodore Parker ]

Alas! our young affections run to waste,
Or water but the desert. [ Byron ]

Power above powers!
O heavenly eloquence!
That with the strong rein of commanding words,
Dost manage, guide, and master the eminence
Of men's affections, more than all their swords! [ Daniel ]

Sweet is the smile of home; the mutual look,
When hearts are of each other sure;
Sweet all the joys that crowd the household nook,
The haunt of all affections pure. [ Cowper ]

Afflictions clarify the soul,
And like hard masters, give more hard directions,
Tutoring the non-age of uncurbed affections. [ Quarles ]

Would you hurt a woman worst, aim at her affections. [ Lew Wallace ]

The paternal hearth, the rallying place of the affections. [ Washington Irving ]

Let grace and goodness be the principle loadstone of thy affections. [ Dryden ]

No affections and a great brain; these are the men to command the world. [ Benjamin Disraeli ]

Our domestic affections are the most salutary basis of all good government. [ Beaconsfield ]

It is sweet to feel by what finespun threads our affections are drawn together. [ Sterne ]

As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the roving heart gathers no affections. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

Our happiness in this world depends on the affections we are enabled to inspire. [ Duchesse de Praslin ]

Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords. [ Earl of Sterling ]

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second-best to the useful. [ C. N. Bovee ]

O you much partial gods! why gave ye men affections, and not power to govern them? [ Ludovic Barry ]

Our happiness in this world depends chiefly on the affections we are able to inspire. [ Mme. de Praslin ]

Chastity is the band that holds together the sheaf of all holy affections and duties. [ Vinet ]

Nothing is more easy than to deceive one's self, as our affections are subtle persuaders. [ Demosthenes ]

The affections are immortal! they are the sympathies which unite the ceaseless generations. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

All beauty does not inspire love. Some please the sight without captivating the affections. [ Cervantes ]

We ought to allow the affections of the mind to be neither too much elated nor abjectly depressed. [ Cicero ]

The tastes, affections, and sentiments are more absolutely the man than his talent or acquirements. [ Henry T. Tuckerman ]

The lust of dominion burns with a flame so fierce as to overpower all other affections of the human breast. [ Tacitus ]

Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are only to be fixed by those that are real. [ De Moy ]

Hearts may be attracted by assumed qualities, but the affections are not to be fixed but by those which are real. [ De Moy ]

Pride, though it cannot prevent the holy affections of nature from beings felt, may prevent them from being shown. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Friends are the leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we are, and we complement our affections in theirs. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

The heart is, perhaps, never so sensible of happiness, as after a short separation from the object of its affections. [ Miss May Hamilton ]

Whosoever in the frame of his nature and affections is unfit for friendship, he taketh it of the beast, and not from humanity. [ Bacon ]

Men of strong affections are jealous of their own genius. They fear lest they should be loved for a quality, and not for themselves. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

Affections injured by tyranny, or rigor of compulsion, like tempest threatened trees, unfirmly rooted, never spring to timely growth. [ John Ford ]

Riches should be admitted into our houses, but not into our hearts; we may take them into our possession, but toot into our affections. [ Charron ]

Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns. [ Goldsmith ]

It is a certain rule that wit and passion are entirely incompatible. When the affections are moved, there is no place for the imagination. [ Hume ]

There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot be gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect. [ Zimmermann ]

The affections are the children of ignorance; when the horizon of our experience expands, and models multiply, love and admiration imperceptibly vanish. [ Beaconsfield ]

The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot. [ Wm. Hazlitt ]

God should be the object of all our desires, the end of all our actions, the principle of all our affections, and the governing power of our whole souls. [ Massillon ]

There comes a time when the souls of human beings, women more even than men, begin to faint for the atmosphere of the affections they are made to breathe. [ Holmes ]

Power above powers! O heavenly eloquence! that, with the strong reign of commanding words, dost manage, guide and master the high eminence of men's affections! [ Daniel ]

Humour is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]

Friendship heightens all our affections. We receive all the ardor of our friend in addition to our own. The communication of minds gives to each the fervor of each. [ William Ellery Channing ]

If the deepest and best affections which God has given us sometimes brood over the heart like doves of peace, - they sometimes suck out our life-blood like vampires. [ Mrs. Jameson ]

It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues. [ Simms ]

Light that a man receiveth by counsel from another is drier and purer than that which cometh from his own understanding and judgment, which is ever in his affections and customs. [ Bacon ]

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained love will die at the roots. [ Hawthorne ]

If the ear is the road to the heart, and the heart to the affections, how keen must the affliction of deafness be to those who possess great tenderness of the one, and susceptibility of the other. [ J. Ellis ]

It is with books as with women, where a certain plainness of manner and of dress is more engaging than that glare of paint and airs and apparel which may dazzle the eye, but reaches not the affections. [ Hume ]

Eloquence, at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. [ Hume ]

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body. It preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and affections which can possibly befall us. [ Addison ]

The heart will commonly govern the head, and it is certain that any strong passion, set the wrong way, will soon infatuate even the wisest of men, therefore the first part of wisdom is to watch the affections. [ Dr. Waterland ]

A thousand wheels of labor are turned by dear affections, and kept in motion by self-sacrificing endurance; and the crowds that pour forth in the morning and return at night are daily processiona of love and duty. [ Chapin ]

We should carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity the state, angels the company, the Lamb the light, and God the inheritance and portion of His people forever. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

At the age when the faculties droop, when stern experience has destroyed all sweet illusions, man may seek solitude; but, at twenty, the affections which he is compelled to repress are a tomb in which he buries himself alive. [ E. de Girardin ]

And this is woman's fate: all her affections are called into life by winning flatteries, and then thrown back upon themselves to perish; and her heart, her trusting heart, filled with weak tenderness, is left to bleed or, break. [ L. E. Landon ]

There are jilts in friendship, as well as in love; and by the behavior of some men in both, one would almost imagine that they industriously sought to gain the affections of others with the view only of making the parties miserable. [ Fielding ]

There is no power like that of oratory. Caesar controlled men by exciting their fears; Cicero, by captivating their affections and swaying their passions. The influence of the one perished with its author; that of the other continues to this day. [ Henry Clay ]

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection, but addresses itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. [ Hume ]

That fine part of our construction, the eye, seems as much the receptacle and seat of our passions as the mind itself; and at least it is the outward portal to introduce them to the house within, or rather the common thoroughfare to let our affections pass in and out. [ Addison ]

The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man's intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye. [ Hiram Powers ]

Why doth Fate, that often bestows thousands of souls on a conqueror or tyrant, to be the sport of his passions, so often deny to the tenderest and most feeling hearts one kindred one on which to lavish their affections? Why is it that Love must so often sigh in vain for an object, and Hate never? [ Richter ]

We may be sure that cheerful beliefs about the unseen world, framed in full harmony with the beauty of the visible universe, and with the sweetness of domestic affections and joys, and held in company with kindred and friends, will illuminate the dark places on the pathway of earthly life and brighten all the road. [ Charles W. Eliot ]

The king is but a man, as I am; the violet smells to him as it doth to me; the element shows to him as it doth to me; all his senses have but human conditions; his ceremonies laid by, in his nakedness he appears but a man; and though his affections are higher mounted than ours, yet, when they stoop, they stoop with the like wing. [ William Shakespeare ]

True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart; it is not contempt; its essence is love: it issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper. It is a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting, as it were, into our affections what is below us, while sublimity draws down into our affections what is above us. [ Carlyle ]

A composition which dazzles at first sight by gaudy epithets, or brilliant turns of expression, or glittering trains of imagery, may fade gradually from the mind, leaving no enduring impression. Words which flow fresh and warm from a full heart, and which are instinct with the life and breath of human feeling, pass into household memories, and partake of the immortality of the affections from which they spring. [ Whipple ]

Legitimately produced, and truly inspired, fiction interprets humanity, informs the understanding, and quickens the affections. It reflects ourselves, warns us against prevailing social follies, adds rich specimens to our cabinets of character, dramatizes life for the unimaginative, daguerreotypes it for the unobservant, multiplies experience for the isolated or inactive, and cheers age, retirement and invalidism with an available and harmless solace. [ Tuckerman ]

Gratitude is a link between justice and love. It discharges by means of affections those debts which the affections only can discharge, and which are so much the more sacred for this reason. Gratitude never springs up in the soil of selfishness, for self-interest in its eagerness to appropriate is unable to understand the impulses of generosity or to measure the true value of the gift. And, when we do understand it, we must love much to be willing to accept, we refuse when we love but little. Gratitude is the justice of the heart. [ Degerando ]

The love of flowers seems a naturally implanted passion, without any alloy or debasing object in its motive; we cherish them in youth, we admire them in declining years; but perhaps it is the early flowers of spring that always bring with them the greatest degree of pleasure; and our affections seem to expand at the sight of the first blossom under the sunny wall, or sheltered bank, however humble its race may be. With summer flowers we seem to live, as with our neighbors, in harmony and good order; but spring flowers are cherished as private friendships. [ G. A. Sola ]