Old men think themselves cunning. [ Proverb ]

Thought is deeper than all speech.
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught. [ C. P. Cranch ]

Hasty gamesters oversee themselves. [ Proverb ]

God helps those who help themselves. [ Algernon Sidney ]

Monuments themselves memorials need. [ Crabbe ]

Trifles themselves are elegant in him. [ Pope ]

The laws of decency enforce themselves. [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

They hurt themselves that wrong others. [ Proverb ]

Listeners never hear good of themselves. [ Spanish Proverb ]

Our wanton accidents take root, and grow
To vaunt themselves God's laws. [ Charles Kingsley ]

Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves;
There is a nobleness of mind that heals
Wounds beyond salves. [ Cartwright ]

But love is blind and lovers can not see
The pretty follies that themselves commit. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act II. Sc. 6 ]

Few are fit to be entrusted with themselves. [ Proverb ]

Let those teach others who themselves excel;
And censure freely, who have written well. [ Alexander Pope ]

As waggish boys in games themselves forswear,
So the boy love is perjured everywhere. [ William Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream, Act I. Sc.1 ]

Though it be honest, it is never good
To bring bad news; give to a gracious message
An host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell
Themselves when they be felt. [ William Shakespeare ]

The best-concerted schemes men lay for fame.
Die fast away; only themselves die faster.
The far-famed sculptor, and the laurelled bard,
Those bold insurancers of deathless fame,
Supply their little feeble aids in vain. [ Blair ]

Things bad begun make strong themselves by ill. [ William Shakespeare ]

My people too were scared with eerie sounds,
A footstep, a low throbbing in the walls,
A noise of falling weights that never fell.
Weird whispers, bells that rang without a hand.
Door-handles turn'd when none was at the door.
And bolted doors that open'd of themselves;
And one betwixt the dark and light had seen
Her, bending by the cradle of her babe. [ Tennyson ]

The bells themselves are the best of preachers,
Their brazen lips are learned teachers.
From their pulpits of stone, in the upper air,
Sounding aloft, without crack or flaw.
Shriller than trumpets under the Law,
Now a sermon and now a prayer. [ Longfellow ]

Hate no one - hate their vices, not themselves. [ Brainard ]

Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep. [ Pope ]

Great actions crown themselves with lasting bays;
Who well deserves needs not another's praise. [ Heath ]

In love the heavens themselves do guide the state;
Money buys lands, and wives are sold by fate. [ William Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act V. Sc. 5 ]

Those who would make us feel must feel themselves. [ Churchill ]

Surgeons ought not to be full of sores themselves. [ Proverb ]

There is a tendency in things to right themselves. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Crows are never the whiter for washing themselves. [ Proverb ]

The eyes believe themselves, the ears other people. [ German Proverb ]

Bells call others to church, but go not themselves. [ Proverb ]

Advice may be wrong, but examples prove themselves. [ Henry Wheeler Shaw (pen name Josh Billings) ]

Cuckolds themselves are the very last that know it. [ Proverb ]

Chance never helps those who do not help themselves. [ Sophocles ]

Egotists cannot converse, they talk to themselves only. [ A. Bronson Alcott ]

They that command the most, enjoy themselves the least. [ Proverb ]

Society is the union of men and not the men themselves. [ Montesquieu ]

All are of the race of God, and have in themselves good. [ Bailey ]

When beggars die, there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes. [ William Shakespeare ]

Marry your daughters betimes lest they marry themselves. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

To wilful men. The injuries that they themselves procure
Must be their school-masters. [ William Shakespeare ]

The first chapter of fools is to esteem themselves wise. [ Proverb ]

The most violent friendships soonest wear themselves out. [ Hazlitt ]

Beggars are the vermin that attach themselves to the rich.

The English have a heavy-hearted way of amusing themselves. [ Sully ]

All thoughtful men are solitary and original in themselves. [ Lowell ]

None can think so well of others, as most do of themselves. [ Proverb ]

Good men want the laws for nothing but to defend themselves. [ Proverb ]

Bells call others, but themselves enter not into the church. [ English Proverb, collected by George Herbert ]

Great talents are rare, and they rarely recognise themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Boys are boys, and boys occupy themselves with boyish things.

Hedgehogs lodge among thorns, because themselves are prickly. [ Proverb ]

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake. [ Swift ]

Those who lament for fortune do not often lament for themselves. [ Voltaire ]

Men's minds are too ingenious in palliating guilt in themselves. [ Livy ]

Take care of the pence; the pounds will take care of themselves. [ Proverb ]

Science deals exclusively with things as they are in themselves. [ John Ruskin ]

They who have light in themselves will not revolve as satellites. [ Seneca ]

We prize books, and they prize them most who are themselves wise. [ Emerson ]

Many men kill themselves for love, but many more women die of it. [ Lemontey ]

Great people's servants think themselves of no small consequence. [ German Proverb ]

Many come to bring their clothes to church rather than themselves. [ Proverb ]

They that are full of themselves are wise only for want of thinking. [ Proverb ]

Base natures,, if they find themselves suspected, will never be true. [ Proverb ]

Faith and hope themselves shall die, while deathless charity remains. [ Prior ]

Most men have more courage than even they themselves think they have. [ Greville ]

Lovers are never tired of each other; they always speak of themselves. [ La Roche ]

How many coward passions hide themselves under the mask of puritanism! [ Mme. Louise Colet ]

Thieves for their robbery have authority, when judges steal themselves. [ William Shakespeare ]

Nobody will persist long in helping those who will not help themselves. [ Johnson ]

Nothing at bottom is interesting to the majority of men but themselves. [ Arthur Schopenhauer ]

Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weakness. [ Mme. du Deffand ]

With women, the desire to bedeck themselves is always the desire to please. [ Marmontel ]

The ambitious do not belong to themselves: they are the slaves of the world.

The destiny of nations depends upon the manner in which they feed themselves. [ Brillat-Savarin ]

People are never so near playing the fool as when they think themselves wise. [ Lady Montagu ]

Love is blind, and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that themselves commit. [ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice ]

Falsehoods not only disagree with truths, but usually quarrel among themselves. [ Daniel Webster ]

Women give themselves to God when the devil wants nothing more to do with them. [ Sophie Arnould ]

If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them. [ Tillotson ]

People seldom improve when they have no other model but themselves to copy after. [ Oliver Goldsmith ]

Those who want friends to open themselves unto are cannibals of their own hearts. [ Bacon ]

The violence of either grief or joy, their own enactures with themselves destroy. [ William Shakespeare ]

The great would not think themselves demigods if the little did not worship them. [ Boiste ]

To bring nations to surrender themselves to new ideas is not the affair of a day. [ Draper ]

Those who never retract their opinions love themselves more than they love truth. [ Joubert ]

The gifts of genius are far greater than the givers themselves venture to suppose. [ Moses Harvey ]

Good things have to be engraved on the memory; bad ones stick there of themselves. [ Charles Reade ]

There is nothing in which men more deceive themselves than in what they call zeal. [ Addison ]

Those who cannot themselves observe can at least acquire the observation of others. [ Beaconsfield ]

We see time's furrows on another's brow; how few themselves in that just mirror see! [ Young ]

In one thing men of all ages are alike; they have believed obstinately in themselves. [ Jacobi ]

Men are tormented by the opinions they have of things, and not the things themselves. [ Montaigne ]

Laws of nature are God's thoughts thinking themselves out in the orbits and the tides. [ Charles H. Parkhurst ]

Should all despair that have revolted wives, the tenth of mankind would hang themselves. [ William Shakespeare ]

They who lie soft and warm in a rich estate seldom come to heat themselves at the altar. [ South ]

I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves. [ Lord Chesterfield ]

There can be no shame in accepting orders from those who have themselves learned to obey. [ W. E. Forster ]

In condemning the vanity of women, men complain of the fire they themselves have kindled. [ Lingrie ]

We do not judge men by what they are in themselves, but by what they are relatively to us. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

The selfish, loving only themselves, are loved by no one: so, selfishness is moral suicide. [ De Gaston ]

If thou wouldest please the ladies, thou must endeavor to make them pleased with themselves. [ Fuller ]

I cannot conceive that mere idlers can have respect enough for themselves to be comfortable. [ Timothy Flint ]

To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair. [ Froude ]

Riches are of no value in themselves; their use is discovered only in that which they procure. [ Dr. Johnson ]

They that do an act that does deserve requital pay first themselves the stock of such content. [ Sir Robert Howard ]

Great endowments often announce themselves in youth in the form of singularity and awkwardness. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

The rosebuds lay their crimson lips together, and the green leaves are whispering to themselves. [ Amelia B. Welby ]

Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great. [ Ralph Waldo Emerson ]

Happiness generally depends more on the opinion we have of things, than on the things themselves. [ Proverb ]

Good artists give everything to their art and consequently are perfectly uninteresting themselves. [ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey ]

People have no right to make fools of themselves, unless they have no relations to blush for them. [ Haliburton ]

We have some writers so abstruse and deep that they drown themselves in their fathomless sentences. [ H. W. Shaw ]

The dregs may stir themselves as they please; they fall back to the bottom by their own coarseness. [ Joubert ]

A man selects his enemies, his friends make themselves, and from these friends he is apt to suffer. [ Donn Piatt ]

How dire is love when one is so tortured; and yet lovers cannot exist without torturing themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

I have been too much occupied with things themselves to think either of their beginning or their end. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

How many people would be mute if they were forbidden to speak well of themselves, and evil of others! [ Mme. de Fontaines ]

The reason why lovers never weary of each other's company is because they speak always of themselves. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

Miserable men commiserate not themselves; bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their own bowels. [ Sir Thomas Browne ]

The beginning and the end of love are both marked by embarrassment when the two find themselves alone. [ La Bruyere ]

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves. [ Dr. Johnson ]

They that stand high have many blasts to shake them; and if they fall, they dash themselves to pieces. [ William Shakespeare ]

Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them. [ Duncan ]

Intemperate wits will spare neither friend nor foe, and make themselves the common enemies of mankind. [ L'Estrange ]

Men who have great riches and little culture rush into business, because they are weary of themselves. [ Horace Greeley ]

Dishonest men conceal their faults from themselves as well as others; honest men know and confess them. [ Rochefoucauld ]

It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon man as men bring upon themselves and suffer willingly. [ Jeremy Taylor ]

Young men are apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. [ Chesterfield ]

A man that is desirous to excel should endeavor it in those things that are in themselves most excellent. [ Epictetus ]

Cheats easily believe others as bad as themselves; there is no deceiving them, not do they long deceive. [ La Bruyere ]

Virtue alone is not sufficient for the exercise of government; laws alone carry themselves into practice. [ Mencius ]

Those who first study fate, and say, Fate is the only cause of fortune and misfortune, terrify themselves. [ Hitopadesa ]

There are in the human heart two cups, one for joy and one for sorrow, which empty themselves alternately. [ Mme. de Maintenon ]

It is as natural for women to pride themselves in fine clothes, as it is for a peacock to spread his tail. [ Proverb ]

We accuse women of insincerity without perceiving that they are more sincere with us than with themselves.

Fools with bookish knowledge are children with edged weapons; they hurt themselves, and put others in pain. [ Zimmermann ]

To be rational is so glorious a thing that two-legged creatures generally content themselves with the title. [ Locke ]

Sir, your levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves. [ Samuel Johnson ]

Mysteries which must explain themselves are not worth the loss of time which a conjecture about them takes up. [ Sterne ]

It is often shorter and better to yield to others than to endeavor to compel others to adjust themselves to us. [ La Bruyere ]

Youth will never live to age unless they keep themselves in breath with exercise, and in heart with joyfulness. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

Labor not to be rich; * * * for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven. [ Bible ]

Some old men like to give good precepts to console themselves for their inability no longer to give bad examples. [ A. Dupuy ]

Because all men are apt to flatter themselves, to entertain the addition of other men's praises is most perilous. [ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

Some men do as much begrudge others a good name, as they want one themselves; and perhaps that is the reason of it. [ William Penn ]

Instruction does not prevent waste of time or mistakes; and mistakes themselves are often the best teachers of all. [ Froude ]

The bore is usually considered a harmless creature, or of that class of irrational bipeds who hurt only themselves. [ Maria Edgeworth ]

The beginning and the decline of love manifest themselves in the embarrassment that one feels in the tête-à-tête. [ La Bruyere ]

There are men who pride themselves on their insensibility to love: it is like boasting of having been always stupid. [ S. de Castres ]

The love of flattery in most men proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary. [ Swift ]

Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places. [ Shenstone ]

There are some vile and contemptible men who, allowing themselves to be conquered by misfortune, seek a refuge in death. [ Agathon ]

Like the air-invested heron, great persons should conduct themselves; and the higher they be, the less they should show. [ Sir P. Sidney ]

The ambitious deceive themselves when they propose an end to their ambition; for that end, when attained, becomes a means. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Although men flatter themselves with their great actions, they are not so often the result of a great design as of chance. [ La Rochefoucauld ]

A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round, If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground. [ Longfellow ]

Sympathetic people are often uncommunicative about themselves; they give back reflected images which hide their own depths. [ George Eliot ]

I never think it necessary to repeat calumnies; they are sparks, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. [ Boerhaave ]

If there were a people of gods, they would govern themselves democratically: so perfect a government is not suitable to men. [ J. J. Rousseau ]

Few things are impracticable in themselves: and it is for want of application, rather than of means, that men fail of success. [ Rochefoucauld ]

Women dress less to be clothed than to be adorned. When alone before their mirrors, they think more of men than of themselves. [ Rochebrune ]

If it were ever allowable to forget what is due to superiority of rank, it would be when the privileged themselves remember it. [ Mme. Swetchine ]

Figure-flingers and star-gazers pretend to foretell the fortunes of kingdoms, and have no foresight in what concerns themselves. [ L'Estrange ]

I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used to say. Take care of the pence; for the pounds will take care of themselves. [ Lord Chesterfield ]

Presence of mind, penetration, fine observation, are the sciences of women; ability to avail themselves of these is their talent. [ Rousseau ]

A name is a kind of face whereby one is known; wherefore taking a false name is a kind of visard whereby men disguise themselves. [ Thomas Fuller ]

What man in his right mind would conspire his own hurt? Men are beside themselves when they transgress against their convictions. [ William Penn ]

They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hope that one will come and cut the halter. [ Fuller ]

Others proclaim the infirmities of a great man with satisfaction and complacence, if they discover none of the like in themselves. [ Addison ]

We can never be grieved for their miseries who are thoroughly wicked, and have thereby justly called their calamities on themselves. [ Dryden ]

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 ]

They that marry ancient people merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves in hopes that some one will come and cut the halter. [ Thomas Fuller ]

None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves. [ Colton ]

A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again. [ Joseph Roux ]

It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to brood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui. [ Hazlitt ]

That the women of the Old Testament were dressed with oriental richness there is no doubt, nor are they censured for so arraying themselves. [ Charlotte M. Yonge ]

It is, indeed, a blessing, when the virtues of noble races are hereditary; and do derive themselves from the imitation of virtuous ancestors. [ Nabb ]

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. [ Colton ]

When men live as if there were no God, it becomes expedient for them that there should be none; and then they endeavor to persuade themselves so. [ Tillotson ]

Men who marry wives very much superior to themselves are not so truly husbands to their wives as they are unawares made slaves to their position. [ Plutarch ]

I think you will find that people who honestly mean to be true really contradict themselves much more rarely than those who try to be consistent. [ Holmes ]

Things will always right themselves in time, if only those who know what they want to do, and can do, persevere unremittingly in work and action. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Gruel men are the greatest lovers of mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in others, not in themselves. [ Colton ]

The eyes of a man are of no use without the observing power. Telescopes and microscopes are cunning contrivances, but they cannot see of themselves. [ Paxton Hood ]

Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but at the same time best know how to prize them most. [ Caleb C. Colton ]

The path of nature is, indeed, a narrow one, and it is only the immortals that seek it, and, when they find it, do not find themselves cramped therein. [ Lowell ]

As a man may be eating all day, and for want of digestion is never nourished, so these endless readers may cram themselves in vain with intellectual food. [ Dr. I. Watts ]

Too many instances there are of daring men, who by presuming to sound the deep things of religion, have cavilled and argued themselves out of all religion. [ Thomas à Kempis ]

Irresolution on the schemes of life which offer themselves to our choice, and inconstancy in pursuing them, are the greatest causes of all our unhappiness. [ Addison ]

Fame usually comes to those who are thinking about something else; very rarely to those who say to themselves, Go to now, let us be a celebrated individual. [ Oliver Wendell Holmes ]

We should pray with as much earnestness as those who expect everything from God; we should act with as much energy as those who expect everything from themselves. [ Colton ]

In misfortune we often mistake dejection for constancy; we bear it without daring to look on it; like cowards, who suffer themselves to be murdered without resistance. [ Rochefoucauld ]

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 ]

Many have puzzled themselves about the origin of evil. I am content to observe that there is evil, and that there is a way to escape from it; and with this I begin and end. [ John Newton ]

By reasoning we satisfy ourselves: by rhetoric we satisfy others. Most modern orators and rhetoricians content themselves with fulfilling the first part of this proposition. [ P. B. Randolph ]

I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted. [ Horace Walpole ]

It is singular how impatient men are with overpraise of others, how patient of overpraise of themselves; and yet the one does them no injury, while the other may be their ruin. [ Lowell ]

There are more people abusive to others than lie open to abuse themselves; but the humor goes round, and he that laughs at me today will have somebody to laugh at him tomorrow. [ Seneca ]

Women always show more taste in adorning others than themselves; and the reason is that their persons are like their hearts - they read another's better that they can their own. [ Richter ]

Natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. [ Bacon ]

I am one who finds within me a nobility that spurns! the idle pratings of the great, and their mean boasts of what their fathers were, while they themselves are fools effeminate. [ Percival ]

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples. [ Pope ]

When women oppose themselves to the projects and ambition of men, they excite their lively resentment; if in their youth they meddle with political intrigues, their modesty must suffer. [ Mme. de Stael ]

Most men take least notice of what is plain, as if that was of no use; but puzzle their thoughts to be themselves in those vast depths and abysses which no human understanding can fathom. [ Bishop Sherlock ]

It is the care of a very great part of mankind to conceal their indigence from the rest. They support themselves by temporary expedients, and every day is lost in contriving for tomorrow. [ Johnson ]

Leisure and solitude are the best effect of riches, because mother of thought. Both are avoided by most rich men, who seek company and business, which are signs of being weary of themselves. [ Sir W. Temple ]

It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. [ Washington Irving ]

It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other. [ Colton ]

Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families, and good jobs for themselves. These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public... [ President Donald J. Trump, Presidential Inaugeration Speech, Jan 20, 2017 ]

Commonsense punishes all departures from her, by forcing those who rebel into a desperate war with all facts and experience, and into a still more terrible civil war with each other and with themselves. [ Colton ]

People seem to think themselves in some ways superior to heaven itself, when they complain of the sorrow and want round about them. And yet it is not the devil for certain who puts pity into their hearts. [ Anne Isabella Thackeray ]

Those who wish to forget painful thoughts do well to absent themselves for a while from the ties and objects that recall them: but we can be said only to fulfill our destiny in the place that gave us birth. [ Hazlitt ]

He who would do some great thing in this short life, must apply himself to the work with such a concentration of his forces as to the idle spectators, who live only to amuse themselves, looks like insanity. [ John Foster ]

The words in prose ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves, it is a fault; in the very best styles, as Southey's, you read page after page without noticing the medium. [ Coleridge ]

The celebrated Boerhaave, who had many enemies, used to say that he never thought it necessary to repeat their calumnies. They are sparks, said he, which, if you do not blow them, will go out of themselves. [ Disraeli ]

The lowest people are generally the first to find fault with show or equipage; especially that of a person lately emerged from his obscurity. They never once consider that he is breaking the ice for themselves. [ Shenstone ]

It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as they are overrated by others. [ Whately ]

Very few people know how to enjoy life. Some say to themselves: I do this or that, therefore I am amused: I have paid so many pieces of gold, hence I feel so much pleasure; and they wear away their lives on that grindstone. [ A. de Musset ]

The Carlyles were men who lavished their heart and conscience upon their work; they builded themselves, their days, their thoughts and sorrows, into their houses; they leavened the soil with the sweat of their rugged brows. [ John Burroughs ]

There are persons who flatter themselves that the size of their works will make them immortal. They pile up reluctant quarto upon solid folio, as if their labors, because they are gigantic, could contend with truth and heaven! [ Junius ]

I know not whether there exists such a thing as a coin stamped with a pair of pinions; but I wish this were the device which monarchs put upon their dollars and ducats, to show that riches make to themselves wings, and fly away. [ Gotthold ]

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 ]

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention. [ Sterne ]

When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others. [ Colton ]

The best system of education is that which draws its chief support from the voluntary effort of the community, from the individual efforts of citizens, and from those burdens of taxation which they voluntarily impose upon themselves. [ Garfield ]

The habit of exaggeration, like dram-drinking, becomes a slavish necessity, and they who practise it pass their lives in a kind of mental telescope, through whose magnifying medium they look upon themselves and everything around them. [ J. B. Owen ]

A majority of women seem to consider themselves sent into the world for the sole purpose of displaying dry goods, and it is only when acting the part of an animated milliner's block that they feel they are performing their appropriate mission. [ Abba Goold Woolson ]

No doubt every person is entitled to make and to think as much of himself as possible, only he ought not to worry others about this, for they have enough to do with and in themselves, if they too are to be of some account, both now and hereafter. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Magnificence is likewise a source of the sublime. A great profusion of things which are splendid or valuable in themselves is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. [ Burke ]

Nothing on earth is without difficulty. Only the inner impulse, the pleasure it gives and love enable us to surmount obstacles; to make smooth our way, and lift ourselves out of the narrow grooves in which other people sorrowfully distress themselves. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Oratory, like the drama, abhors lengthiness; like the drama, it must keep doing. It avoids, as frigid, prolonged metaphysical soliloquy. Beauties themselves, if they delay or distract the effect which should be produced on the audience, become blemishes. [ Edward Bulwer-Lytton ]

The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours; and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves, - the creature of habits and infirmities. [ Isaac Disraeli ]

There are few souls who are so vigorously organized as to be able to maintain themselves in the calm of a strong resolve: all honest consciences are capable of the generosity of a day, but almost all succumb the next morning under the effort of the sacrifice. [ George Sand ]

High original genius is always ridiculed on its first appearance; most of all by those who have won themselves the highest reputation in working on the established lines. Genius only commands recognition when it has created the taste which is to appreciate it. [ Froude ]

The liberty of a people consists in being governed by laws which they have made themselves, under whatsoever form it may be of government; the liberty of a private man, in being master of his own time and actions, as far as may consist with the laws of God and of his country. [ Cowley ]

I pity men who occupy themselves exclusively with the transitory in things and lose themselves in the study of what is perishable, since we are here for this very end that we may make the perishable imperishable, which we can do only after we have learned how to appreciate both. [ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ]

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed. That nation cannot be free, where reform is a common hack, that is dismissed with a kick the moment it has brought its rider to his place. [ Colton ]

Other parts of the body assist the speaker, but these speak themselves. By them we ask, we promise, we invoke, we dismiss, we threaten, we entreat, we deprecate; we express fear, joy, grief, our doubts, our assent, our penitence; we show moderation, profusion; we mark number and time. [ Quintilian ]

Some are so close and reserved that they will not show their wares but by a dark light, and seem always to keep back somewhat; and when they know within themselves they speak of that which they do not well know, would nevertheless seem to others to know of that which they may not well speak. [ Bacon ]

Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at pace, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence. [ Colton ]

The morbid states of health, the irritableness of disposition arising from unstrung nerves, the impatience, the crossness, the fault-finding of men, who, full of morbid influences, are unhappy themselves, and throw the cloud of their troubles like a dark shadow upon others, teach us what eminent duty there is in health. [ Beecher ]

Motives are symptoms of weakness, and supplements for the deficient energy of the living principle, the law within us. Let them then be reserved for those momentous acts and duties in which the strongest and best balanced natures must feel themselves deficient, and where humility no less than prudence prescribes deliberation. [ Coleridge ]

Every common dauber writes rascal and villain under his pictures, because the pictures themselves have neither character nor resemblance. But the works of a master require no index. His features and coloring are taken from nature. The impression they make is immediate and uniform; nor is it possible to mistake his characters. [ Junius ]

Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience; which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and ineffective. [ Chesterfield ]

I will not much commend others to themselves, I will not at all commend myself to others. So to praise any to their faces is a kind of flattery, but to praise myself to any is the height of folly. He that boasts his own praises speaks ill of himself, and much derogates from his true deserts. It is worthy of blame to affect commendation. [ Arthur Warwick ]

Founders and senators of states and cities, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the people, and other eminent persons in civil government, were honored but with titles of worthies or demigods; whereas such as were inventors and authors of new arts, endowments, and commodities towards man's life, were ever consecrated among the gods themselves. [ Bacon ]

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice. [ Swift ]

Individuals possessing moderate sized brains easily find their proper sphere, and enjoy in it scope for all their energy. In ordinary circumstances they distinguish themselves, but they sink when difficulties accumulate around them. Persons with large brains, on the other hand, do not readily attain their appropriate place; common occurrences do not rouse or call them forth. [ George Combe ]

Almost all men are over-anxious. No sooner do they enter the world than they lose that taste for natural and simple pleasures so remarkable in early life. Every hour do they ask themselves what progress they have made in the pursuit of wealth or honor; and on they go as their fathers went before them, till, weary and sick at heart, they look back with a sigh of regret to the golden time of their childhood. [ Rogers ]

Posture or Attitude? Each of these words has its appropriate place, and one should not be misapplied for the other. Posture is the mode of placing the body, and may be either natural or assumed. Attitude is always assumed, and is intended to display some grace of the body, or some affection or purpose of the mind. Postures, when natural, accommodate themselves to the convenience of the body; when assumed they may be either serious or ridiculous. [ Pure English, Hackett And Girvin, 1884 ]

If I were to choose the people with whom I would spend my hours of conversation, they should be certainly such as labored no further than to make themselves readily and clearly apprehended, and would have patience and curiosity to understand me. To have good sense and ability to express it are the most essential and necessary qualities in companions. When thoughts rise in us fit to utter among familiar friends, there needs but very little care in clothing them. [ Steele ]

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age. [ Emerson ]

How the universal heart of man blesses flowers! They are wreathed round the cradle, the marriage altar, and the tomb; all these are appropriate uses. Flowers should deck the brow of the youthful bride, for they are in themselves a lovely type of marriage; they should twine round the tomb, for their perpetually renewed beauty is a symbol of the resurrection; they should festoon the altar, for their fragrance and their beauty ascend in perpetual worship before the Most High. [ Mrs. L. M. Child ]

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful. [ Montaigne ]

When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon those whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious with out pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness. [ Dr. Johnson ]

Consistent characters are those which in social intercourse are easy, sure, and gentle. We do not clash with them, and they are never wanting nor contradictory to themselves; their stability incites confidence, their frankness induces self-surrendering openness. We feel at ease with them, we are not offended at their superiority, doubtless we admire them less, but we also hardly dream of feeling envious of them, and they seem almost to disdain malignity by the peaceful influence of their presence. [ Degerando ]

The loss of a mother is always severely felt; even though Her health may incapacitate her from taking any active part in the care of her family, still she is a sweet rallying-point, around which affection and obedience, and a thousand tender endeavors to please concentrate; and dreary is the blank when such a point is withdrawn! It is like that lonely star before us; neither its heat nor light are anything to us in themselves; yet the shepherd would feel his heart sad if he missed it, when he lifts his eye to the brow of the mountain over which it rises when the sun descends. [ Lamartine ]

When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire forsake me: when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I reflect how vain it is to grieve for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying beside those who deposed them, when I behold rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men who divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. [ Addison ]

Greatness is not a teachable nor gainable thing, but the expression of the mind of a God-made man: teach, or preach, or labour as you will, everlasting difference is set between one man's capacity and another's; and this God-given supremacy is the priceless thing, always just as rare in the world at one time as another.... And nearly the best thing that men can generally do is to set themselves, not to the attainment, but the discovery of this: learning to know gold, when we see it, from iron-glance, and diamond from flint-sand, being for most of us a more profitable employment than trying to make diamonds of our own charcoal. [ John Ruskin ]

Why has the beneficent Creator scattered over the face of the earth such a profusion of beautiful flowers? Why is it that every landscape has its appropriate flowers, every nation its national flowers, every rural home its home flowers? Why do flowers enter and shed their perfume over every scene of life, from the cradle to the grave? Why are flowers made to utter all voices of joy and sorrow in all varying scenes? It is that flowers have in themselves a real and natural significance; they have a positive relation to man; they correspond to actual emotions; they have their mission - a mission of love and mercy; they have their language, and from the remotest ages this language has found its interpreters. [ Henrietta Dumont ]