In composing, as a general rule, run your pen through every other word you have written; you have no idea what vigor it will give your style.
From Sydney Smith
It is safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
Poverty us no disgrace to a man, but it is confoundedly inconvenient.
To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can.
Manners are like the shadows of virtues, they are the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love and respect.
Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love and to be loved is the greatest happiness of existence.
Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.
Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.
What you don't know would make a great book.
2 perspectives
1 perspectives