Dissimulation creeps gradually into the minds of men. [ Cicero ]

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark upon the face, especially the eyes. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapors, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre. [ Washington Irving ]

There is one preacher who does preach with effect, and gradually persuade all persons; his name is Destiny, Divine Providence, and his sermon the inflexible course of things. [ Carlyle ]

What we call the heart is a nervous sensation, like shyness, which gradually disappears in society. It is fervent in the nursery, strong in the domestic circle, tumultuous at school. [ Beaconsfield ]

The common cause of waves is the friction of the wind upon the surface of the water; little ridges or elevations first appear, which by continuance of the force gradually increase until they become the rolling mountains seen where the wind sweeps over a great extent of water. [ F. Marryatt ]

In most old communities there is a commonsense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity. [ Whipple ]

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 ]

Out of the ashes of misanthropy benevolence rises again; we find many virtues where we had imagined all was vice, many acts of disinterested friendship where we had fancied all was calculation and fraud - and so gradually from the two extremes we pass to the proper medium; and, feeling that no human being is wholly good or wholly base, we learn that true knowledge of mankind which induces us to expect little and forgive much. The world cures alike the optimist and the misanthrope. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]