William R. Alger
William R. Alger
William Rounseville Alger was an American Unitarian minister, author, poet, hymnist, editor, and abolitionist. He also served as Chaplain of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.
"The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They 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."
"A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he snatched, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?"
"Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain."
"A gray eye is a sly eye, And roguish is a brown one; Turn full upon me thy eye,— Ah, how its wavelets drown one! 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."
