C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
B. R. Haydon
All government is an evil, but, of the two forms of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.
Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you.
Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which you conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
Genius in poverty is never feared, because nature, though liberal in her gifts in one instance, is forgetful in another.
Genius is nothing more than our common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.
How difficult it is to get men to believe that any other man can or does act from disinterestedness!
If men would only take the chances of doing right because it is right, instead of the immediate certainty of the advantage of doing wrong, how much happier would their lives be.
Invention is totally independent of the will.
It is better to make friends than adversaries of a conquered race.
It is highly convenient to believe in the infinite mercy of God when you feel the need of mercy, but remember also His infinite justice.
Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.
Men of genius are often considered superstitious, but the fact is, the fineness of their nerve renders them more alive to the supernatural than ordinary men.
Mistrusts sometimes come over one’s mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?
Never disregard what your enemies say. They may be severe, they may be prejudiced, they may be determined to see only in one direction, but still in that direction they see clearly. They do not speak all the truth, but they generally speak the truth from one point of view; so far as that goes, attend to them.
Never let your love for your profession overshadow your religious feeling. Depend on it that religion will strengthen, not weaken, your energies, and will not only make you a better sailor, but a superior man. Professional studies are not to be neglected; but, on the other hand, take care how you fall into the common error of believing they are the remedy for all the ills of life.
Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.
No man, perhaps, is so wicked as to commit evil for its own sake. Evil is generally committed under the hope of some advantage the pursuit of virtue seldom obtains. Yet the most successful result of the most virtuous heroism is never without its alloy.
Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.
Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs.
Some persons are so devotional they have not one bit of true religion in them.
Temperance in everything is requisite for happiness.
The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name.
The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity.
There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.
To procrastinate seems inherent in man, for if you do to-day that you may enjoy to-morrow it is but deferring the enjoyment; so that to be idle or industrious, vicious or virtuous, is but with a view of procrastinating the one or the other.
We are a compound of both here and hereafter; we shall be made responsible for the actions of both while here. Anything beyond this is beyond our power to prove, and would be of no real value if we could.