A. W. Hare Quotes
The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.
There is as much difference between good poetry and fine verses, as between the smell of a flower-garden and of a perfumer's shop.
The great mystery of adaptation is that true fidelity can only be achieved through lavish promiscuity.
The problem is that I am in the wrong century to burn things. I am the wrong generation to let it go.
There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings, - the clearest proof that it is out of its element.
Man without religion is the creature of circumstances: Religion is above all circumstances, and will lift him up above them.
Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept of the stretch.
A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.
Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.
What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.
Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.
It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.
It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet.
True modesty does not consist in an ignorance of our merits, but in a due estimate of them.
How idle it is to call certain things God-sends! as if there was anything else in the world.
Some minds are made of blotting-paper: you can write nothing on them distinctly. They swallow the ink, and you find a large spot.
There is a glare about worldly success which is very apt to dazzle men's eyes.
There are men whom you will never dislodge from an opinion, except by taking possession of it yourself.
When we skim along the surface of history we see little but the rough barren rocks that rise out of it.
Most painters have painted themselves. So have most poets: not so palpably indeed, but more assiduously. Some have done nothing else.
I was surprised just now at seeing a cobweb around a knocker; for it was not on the door of heaven.
Just, harmonious, temperate as is the spirit of liberty, there is in the name and mere notion of it a vagueness so opposite to the definite clearness of the moral law.
The difference between those whom the world esteems as good and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little else than that the former have been better sheltered from temptation.
A faith that sets bounds to itself, that will believe so much and no more, that will trust thus far and no further, is none.
Is bread the better for kneading? so is the heart. Knead it then by spiritual exercises; or God must knead it by afflictions.
We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness.
In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.
Some men so dislike the dust kicked up by the generation they belong to, that, being unable to pass, they lag behind it.
Forms and regularity of proceeding, if they are not justice, partake much of the nature of justice, which, in its highest sense, is the spirit of distributive order.
Much of this world's wisdom is still acquired by necromancy,--by consulting the oracular dead.
One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.
If Painting be Poetry's sister, she can only be a sister Anne, who will see nothing but a flock of sheep, while the other bodies forth a troop of dragoons with drawn sabres and white-plumed helmets.
Philosophy cannot raise the commonalty up to her level: so, if she is to become popular, she must sink to theirs.
The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.
Temporary madness may be necessary in some cases, to cleanse and renovate the mind; just as a fit of illness is to carry off the humours of the body.
