W. C. Brownell Quotes
In morals, what begins in fear usually ends in wickedness; in religion, what begins in fear usually ends in fanaticism. Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.
What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of mind, for the moment realizes itself.
All my experience of the world teaches me that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the safe side and the just side of a question is the generous side and the merciful side.
As the presence of those we love is as a double life, so absence, in its anxious longing and sense of vacancy, is as a foretaste of death.
All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.
To reason from analogy is often dangerous, but to illustrate by a fanciful analogy is sometimes a means by which we light an idea, as it were, into the understanding of another.
Art matures. It is the formal elaboration of activity, complete in its own pattern. It is a cosmos of its own.
Genius and sunshine have this in common that they are the two most precious gifts of heaven to earth, and are dispensed equally to the just and the unjust.
Never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.
Occupation was one of the pleasures of paradise, and we cannot be happy without it.
There are no such self-deceivers as those who think they reason when they only feel.
Conversation may be compared to a lyre with seven chords-philosophy, art, poetry, love, scandal, and the weather.
The true purpose of education is to cherish and unfold the seed of immortality already sown within us.
Fame is that which is known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds.
A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.
A bond is necessary to complete our being, only we must be careful that the bond does not become bondage.
Dance ... is life, or becomes it, in a way that other arts cannot attain. It is not in stone, or words or tones, but in our muscles. It is a formulation of their movements.
A man may be as much a fool from the want of sensibility as the want of sense.
A Canadian settler hates a tree, regards it as his natural enemy, as something to be destroyed, eradicated, annihilated by all and any means.
Though we live amid promiscuous pressures, spiritual clutter and forgetfulness, we probably still value the integrity of life.
Blessed is the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted from the world. Yet more blessed and more dear the memory of those who have kept themselves unspotted in the world.
When we talk of leaving our childhood behind us, we might as well say that the river flowing onward to the sea had left the fountain behind.
Talk without truth is the hollow brass; talk without love is like the tinkling cymbal, and when it does not tinkle it jingles, and when it does not jingle, it jars.
In the art of design, color is to form what verse is to prose,--a more harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought.
Even virtue itself, all perfect as it is, requires to be inspirited by passion; for duties are but coldly performed which are but philosophically fulfilled.
Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties.
The moment one begins to solder right and wrong together, one's conscience becomes like a piece of plated goods.
He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own.
Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair.
the distinction between talent and genius is definite. Talent combines and uses; genius combines and creates.
As the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so, through social conventionalism, the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.
Out of the attempt to harmonize our actual life with our aspirations, our experience with our faith, we make poetry, - or, it may be, religion.
You must never believe what the newspapers say. I stand aghast at the impudence of the lies they contain, things not only false in fact, but absolutely impossible.
As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the roving heart gathers no affections.
The streams which would otherwise diverge to fertilize a thousand meadows, must be directed into one deep narrow channel before they can turn a mill.
A cunning mind emphatically delights in its own cunning, and is the ready prey of cunning.
We can sometimes love what we do not understand, but it is impossible completely to understand what we do not love.
Patriotism takes the place of religion in France. In the service of la patrie, the doing of one's duty is elevated into the sphere of exalted emotion.
In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.