Kindle Notes & Highlights
True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.—Chesterfield.
Nothing is politically right which is morally wrong.—Daniel O Connell.
Franklin left behind him more maxims than any of his countrymen, and prudence is the pivot on which they turn.—A. Rhodes.
There are few people who are more often in the wrong than those who cannot endure to be thought so.—Rochefoucauld.
The weakest spot in every man, is where he thinks himself to be the wisest.—Emmons.
He that fancies himself very enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others, may be very ignorant, because he has not studied his own.—Bulwer.
The man whom Heaven appoints to govern others, should himself first learn to bend his passions to the sway of reason.—Thomson.
What is the best government?—That which teaches us to govern ourselves.—Goethe.
Self-control is promoted by humility. Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Humility is the antidote to this evil.—Mrs. Sigourney.
A man must first govern himself, ere he be fit to govern a family; and his family, ere he be fit to bear the government in the commonwealth.—Sir W. Raleigh.
Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Tour looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.—Whately.
No man was ever so much deceived by another, as by himself.—Gréville.
Shall we call ourselves benevolent, when the gifts we bestow do not cost us a single privation?—Degerando.
Of all sorts of earthly good the price is self-denial.—The
One thing is clear to me, that no indulgence of passion destroys the spiritual nature so much as respectable selfishness.—G. Macdonald.
A man is called selfish, not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor’s.—Whately.
Show me the man who would go to heaven alone, and I will show you one who will never be admitted there.—Feltham.
The essence of true nobility is neglect of self.
The virtues are lost in self-interest as rivers are in the sea.—Rochefoucauld.
There are some tempers wrought up by habitual selfishness to an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature or had no lot or connection at all with the species.—Sterne.
So long as we are full of self we are shocked at the faults of others. Let us think often of our own sins, and we shall be lenient to the sins of others.—Fénelon.
Selfishness is the root and source of all natural and moral evils.—Emmons.
That household god, a man’s own self.—Flavel.
Self-interest, that leprosy of the age, attacks us from infancy, and we are startled to observe little heads calculate before knowing how to reflect.—Mad. Girardin.
Goodness and simplicity are indissolubly united.—The bad are the most sophisticated, all the world over, and the good the least.—H. Martineau.
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.—Hazlitt.
A childlike mind, in its simplicity, practices that science of good to which the wise may be blind.—Schiller.
Slander is a vice that strikes a double blow, wounding both him that commits, and him against whom it is committed.—Saurin.
When will talkers refrain from evil-speaking? When listeners refrain from evil-hearing.—Hare.
Slanderers are like flies, that pass all over a man’s good parts to light only on his sores.—Rule of Life.
There would not he so many open mouths if there were not so many open ears.—Bp. Hall.
Oh! many a shaft, at random sent, finds mark the archer little meant; and many a word, at random spoken, may soothe or wound a heart that’s broken.—Walter Scott.
Listen not to a tale-hearer or slanderer, for he tells thee nothing out of good will; but as he discovereth of the secrets of others, so he will of thine in turn.—Socrates.
One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.—Bulwer.
Constant activity in doing good, and endeavoring to make others happy, is one of the surest ways of making ourselves so.
When wit transgresses decency, it degenerates into insolence and impiety.—Tillotson.
