James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
John Sterling
A man with knowledge but without energy, is a house furnished but not inhabited; a man with energy but no knowledge, a house dwelt in but unfurnished.
Colour answers to feeling in man; shape, to thought; motion, to will.
Compliments are only lies in court clothes.
Emotion turning back on itself, and not leading on to thought or action, is the element of madness.
Enthusiasm is grave, inward, self-controlled; mere excitement, outward, fantastical, hysterical, and passing in a moment from tears to laughter.
Every fancy that we would substitute for a reality is, if we saw it aright and saw the whole, not only false, but every way less beautiful and excellent than that which we sacrifice to it.
Every man’s follies are the caricature resemblances of his wisdom.
Instinct is intelligence incapable of self-consciousness.
Lies are the ghosts of truths, the masks of faces.
Man is a substance clad in shadows.
Many have the talents which would make them poets if they had the genius; a few have the genius yet want the talents.
Modern education too often covers the fingers with rings, and at the same time cuts the sinews at the wrists.
Pain has its own noble joy, when it kindles a strong consciousness of life, before stagnant and torpid.
Poetry itself is strength and joy, whether it be crowned by all mankind, or left alone in its own magic hermitage.
Repentance clothes in grass and flowers the grave in which the past is laid.
The worst education which teaches self-denial is better than the best which teaches everything else, and not that.
There is no lie that many men will not believe; there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.
Unproductive truth is none. But there are products which cannot be weighed in patent scales, or brought to market.
What we are going to, is abundantly obscure; but what all men are going from, is very plain.
With love come life and hope.