Quote#Wisdom
One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why…
Quote byHarriet Beecher Stowe · 1811–1896
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "Dress, or Who Makes the Fashions" in The Atlantic Monthly (1864)..
English (original)
One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not, why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic; or if not that, then at least very stylish and very fashionable. It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me.
— Harriet Beecher Stowe
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The obstinancy of cleverness and reason is nothing to the obstinancy of folly and inanity.
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The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry. I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it …
What shall a man do with a sublime tier of moral faculties, when the most profitable business out of his port is the slave-trade? So it was in Newport in those days.
That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.