Arthur Helps

The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice. The rich are always advising the poor; but the poor seldom return the compliment.

Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion.

Soothe the present as much as we may; look forward as hopefully as we can to the future, still the dreadful past must overshadow us.

There is nothing so easily made offensive as good reasoning; and men of clear logical minds, if not gifted at the same time with tact, make more enemies than men with bad hearts and unsound understandings.

The envious man desires some good which another possesses; the jealous man would often be content to be without the good so that that other did not possess it.

Any one who is much talked of, must be much maligned. This seems to be a harsh conclusion; but when you consider how much more given men are to depreciate than to appreciate, you will acknowledge that there is some truth in the saying.

Love, like the opening of the heavens to the Saints, shows for a moment, even to the dullest man, the possibilities of the human race. He has faith, hope, and charity for another being, perhaps but a creation of his imagination: still it …

It has always appeared to me that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss—a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

Self-indulgence takes many forms; and we should bear in mind that there may be a sullen sensuality as well as a gay one.

There is one statesman of the present day, of whom I always say that he would have escaped making the blunders that he has made if he had only ridden more in omnibuses.

Ah, what a blessing this smoking is! perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Friendship is often outgrown; and his former child’s clothes will no more fit a man than some of his former friendships.

The more truth you can get into any business, the better. Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible (I should say nothing), and if your business …

You must work for yourself; for what you reject may be as important for you to have seen and thought about, as what you adopt.

Even the most careless people have a sort of aversion to signing things which they have never considered.

The knowledge of others which experience gives us, is of slight value when compared with that which we obtain from having proved the inconstancy of our own desires.

No man ever praised two persons equally—and pleased them both.

How often we should stop in the pursuit of folly, if it were not for the difficulties that continually beckon us onwards.

Tact is the result of refined sympathy.

The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.

Our knowledge of human nature is for the most part empirical; and it would often be better, if, instead of endeavouring to say some new things ourselves, we were to confirm without more words the sayings of another.

Do not mistake energy for enthusiasm; the softest speakers are often the most enthusiastic of men.

There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.