Augustus Quotes

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.

I could hardly feel much confidence in a man who had never been imposed upon.

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.

The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on the verge of truth.

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.

I like the smell of a dunged field, and the tumult of a popular election.

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.

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.

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.

A lawyer's brief will be brief, before a freethinker thinks freely.

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.

Few are aware that they want any thing, except pounds schillings and pence.

Friendship is Love with jewels on, but without either flowers or veil.

The poet sees things as they look. Is this having a faculty the less? or a sense the more?

Many actions, like the Rhone, have two sources,--one pure, the other impure.

You cannot fathom your mind.... The more you draw from it, the more clear and fruitful it will be.

Make Hamilton Bamilton, make Douglas Puglas, make Percy Bercy, and Stanley Tanley and where would be the long-resounding march and energy divine of the roll-call of the peerage?

My dad taught me that you have to work hard for anything you want in life, and I wanted to be good at playing basketball.

A man prone to suspect evil is mostly looking in his neighbor for what he sees in himself.

Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

How deeply rooted must unbelief be in our hearts when we are surprised to find our prayers answered.

Who is fit to govern others? He who governs himself. You might as well have said: nobody.

We like slipping, but not falling; our real anxiety is to be tempted enough.

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.

Excessive indulgence to others, especially to children is in fact only self-indulgence under an alias.

Every wise man lives in an observatory.

This would be a grand land if only every Irishman would kill a negro, and be hanged for it.

There is great truth in Alphonse Karr's remark that modern men are ugly because they do not wear their beards.

Awards, they come and go. The main thing is it's all about team.

I know there are expectations, but I don't let them affect mt game. I just play basketball.

I just like to play anything that's competitive. If I'm not competing against somebody, then I might as well play something I can enjoy.

Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others.