C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Amiel
A woman is sometimes fugitive, irrational, indeterminable, illogical and contradictory. A great deal of forbearance ought to be shown her, and a good deal of prudence exercised with regard to her, for she may bring about innumerable evils without knowing it. Capable of all kinds of devotion, and of all kinds of treason, “monster incomprehensible,” raised to the second power, she is at once the delight and the terror of man.
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.
Before giving advice we must have secured its acceptance, or, rather, have made it desired.
Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated—it is an art.
Doubt is the accomplice of tyranny.
Dreams are excursions into the limbo of things, a semi-deliverance from the human prison.
Happiness does away with ugliness, and even makes the beauty of beauty.
Happiness has no limits, because God has neither bottom nor bounds, and because happiness is nothing but the conquest of God through love.
Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh; that is to say, over fear; fear of poverty, of suffering, of calumny, of sickness, of isolation, and of death. There is no serious piety without heroism. Heroism is the dazzling and glorious concentration of courage.
In health there is liberty. Health is the first of all liberties, and happiness gives us the energy which is the basis of health.
It is dangerous to abandon one’s self to the luxury of grief: it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery.
Knowledge, love, power,—there is the complete life.
Latent genius is but a presumption. Everything that can be, is bound to come into being, and what never comes into being is nothing.
Liberty, equality,—bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice, and justice towards the feeble becomes necessarily protection or kindness.
Man is saved by love and duty, and by the hope that springs from duty, or rather from the moral facts of consciousness, as a flower springs from the soil.
Never to tire, never to grow cold; to be patient, sympathetic, tender; to look for the budding flower and the opening heart; to hope always; like God, to love always—this is duty.
Only evil grows of itself, while for goodness we want effort and courage.
Order is man’s greatest need, and his true well-being.
Order means light and peace, inward liberty and free command over one’s self; order is power.
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Religion is not a method, it is a life, a higher and supernatural life, mystical in its root and practical in its fruits; a communion with God, a calm and deep enthusiasm, a love which radiates, a force which acts, a happiness which overflows.
Society rests upon conscience and not upon science.
Sympathy is the first condition of criticism; reason and justice presuppose, at their origin, emotion.
The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection.
Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.
To do what is impossible for talent is the mark of genius.
To know how to suggest is the great art of teaching. To attain it we must be able to guess what will interest; we must learn to read the childish soul as we might a piece of music. Then, by simply changing the key, we keep up the attraction and vary the song.
To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and in lending one’s self to the universal delusion without becoming its dupe.
Without faith a man can do nothing. But faith can stifle all science.
Woman is the salvation or destruction of the family. She carries its destinies in the folds of her mantle.
Women wish to be loved without a why or a wherefore; not because they are pretty, or good, or well-bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves.