William Rounseville Alger
The best aphorisms are.... portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.Collection: Feelings
Courage makes a man more than himself; for he is then himself plus his valor.Collection: Courage
Ignorance is the mother of suspicion.Collection: Mother
The devil may be bullied, but not the Deity.Collection: Devil
False eloquence is exaggeration; true eloquence is emphasis.Collection: Exaggeration Is
Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.Collection: Wise
The line of life is a ragged diagonal between duty and desire.Collection: Life
How sublime is the audacious tautology of Mohammed, God is God!Collection: Sublime
Keep your working power at its maximum.Collection: Maximum
A blue eye is a true eye; Mysterious is a dark one, Which flashes like a spark sun! A black eye is the best one.Collection: Eye
Every man is his own greatest dupe.Collection: Men
In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease: Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.Collection: Cities
Aphorisms are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling.Collection: Wisdom
God hands gifts to some, whispers them to others.Collection: Hands
I would give more for the private esteem and love of one than for the public praise of ten thousand.Collection: Friendship
Common sense is the average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual peculiarities.Collection: Men
He who is master of all opinions can never be the bigot of any.Collection: Opinion
Heart's-ease is a flower which blooms from the grave of desire.Collection: Flower
Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.Collection: Atmosphere
What is the highest secret to victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny.Collection: Peace
Words of love are works of love.Collection: Love
The flower which we do not pluck is the only one which never loses its beauty or its fragrance.Collection: Flower
Ah, could the soul, like the body, have a mirror! It has,--a friend.Collection: Mirrors
The most terrible of all things is terror.Collection: Terrible
Tears are the tribute of humanity to its destiny.Collection: Destiny
Of all the portions of life it is in the two twilights, childhood and age, that tears fall with the most frequency; like the dew at dawn and eve.Collection: Fall
Public opinion is a second conscience.Collection: Second Chance
A sigh can shatter a castle in the air.Collection: Air
Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind.Collection: Inspiring
To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius; a vital appropriating exercise of mind closely allied to that which first created it.Collection: Exercise
The human heart has a sigh lonelier than the cry of the bittern.Collection: Heart
Laws are the silent assessors of God.Collection: Law
Cunning is the dwarf of wisdom.Collection: Dwarves
Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation Which rises from the cup of mad impiety, And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication Which is more sober far than all sobriety.Collection: Drunk
In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast.Collection: Blessed
The lower a man descends in his love, the higher he lifts his life.Collection: Men
God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe.Collection: Woe
A fretful fancy is constantly flinging its possessor into gratuitous tophets.Collection: Fancy
Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.Collection: Poetry
The heart must glow before the tongue can gild.Collection: Heart
The God of merely traditional believers is the great Absentee of the universe.Collection: God
There is one thing diviner than duty, namely, the bond of obligation transmuted into liberty.Collection: Liberty
Nemesis is one of God's handmaids.Collection: Retribution
Reserve may be pride fortified in ice; dignity is worth reposing on truth.Collection: Pride
Polite beggary is too common.Collection: Common
True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be.Collection: Leadership