Henry Taylor (1800 – 1886)
English author and dramatist.
The philosophy which affects to teach us a contempt of money does not run very deep; for, indeed, it ought to be still more clear to the philosopher than it is to ordinary men, that there are few things in the world of greater importance.
He who gives only what he would as readily throw away gives without generosity; for the essence of generosity is in self-sacrifice.
Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight…
Of all the uses of adversity which are sweet, none are sweeter than those which grow out of disappointed love…
He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend.
Eternity mourns that. ’Tis an ill cure
For life’s worst ills, to have no time to feel them.
Where sorrow ’s held intrusive and turned out,
There wisdom will not enter, nor true power,
Nor aught that dignifies humanity.
Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.
The world knows nothing of its greatest men.
The art of living easily as to money, is to pitch your scale of living one degree below your means.
Wisdom is corrupted by ambition, even when the quality of the ambition is intellectual. For ambition, even of this quality, is but a form of self-love…
When you give, therefore, take to yourself no credit for generosity, unless you deny yourself something in order that you may give.
An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.
His food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind
And peril to his body.
For no syren did ever so charm the ear of the listener, as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the syren.
Where there are large powers with little ambition (which will happen sometimes, though seldom) nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lighting, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
Shy and proud men ... are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.
Conscience is, in most men, an anticipation of the opinions of others.
I have not skill
From such a sharp and waspish word as "No"
To pluck the sting.
Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lightning, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.
We figure to ourselves
The thing we like; and then we build it up,
As chance will have it, on the rock or sand,—
For thought is tired of wandering o’er the world,
And homebound Fancy runs her bark ashore.