I Samuel Quotes

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion.

Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

Since He looked upon me my heart is not my own. He hath runaway to heaven with it.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; as true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

A contempt of the monuments and the wisdom of the past, may be justly reckoned one of the reigning follies of these days, to which pride and idleness have equally contributed.

Make not Christ a liar in distrusting His promise.

In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied might remove the cause.

The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights.

Hope itself is a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain.

I firmly believe that the benevolent Creator designed the republican Form of Government for Man.

The night will close the door & fasten my anchor within the veil and I shall go away to sleep.

Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation.

The pleasure of expecting enjoyment is often greater than that of obtaining it, and the completion of almost every wish is found a disappointment.

Let us be faithful and care for our own part, which is to do and suffer for Him, and lay Christ's part on Himself, and leave it there; duties are ours, events are the Lord's.

Cant is the parrot talk of a profession.

How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

Admiration begins where acquaintance ceases

You will not be carried to Heaven lying at ease upon a feather bed.

Nature never gives everything at once.

If our Trade be taxed, why not our Lands, or Produce in short, everything we possess? They tax us without having legal representation.

I ... [rely] upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.

Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

When you've told someone that you've left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

Work with some men is as besetting a sin as idleness.

Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.

We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

A nation of shopkeepers are very seldom so disinterested.

Curiosity begins as an act of tearing to pieces or analysis.

There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.

[A] free government . . . cannot be supported without Virtue.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

Where secrecy or mystery begins, vice or roguery is not far off.

Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?.

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.

Manners are the ornament of action.

Sir, when you have seen one green field, you have seen all green fields. Let us walk down Cheapside.

An age that melts in unperceiv'd decay, And glides in modest innocence away.

The peculiar doctrine of Christianity is that of a universal sacrifice and perpetual propitiation.

The highest culture is not obtained from the teacher when at school or college, so much as by our ever diligent self-education when we become men.

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. Indeed, the range of most men in life is so limited that very few have the opportunity of being great.

Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of language.

Until you understand a writer's ignorance, presume yourself ignorant of his understanding.

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.

Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

The truly strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.

When I was growing up, we always had a big family dinner at around noon on Sunday. I still love that whenever it is possible to gather the family together.