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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Heart

The precious porcelain of human clay.

Byron.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

Dickens.

The heart does not lie.

Alfieri.

The more heart, the more sorrow.

Mme. Necker.

Hearts are stronger than swords.

Wendell Phillips.

Alas! there is no instinct like the heart!

Byron.

All offences come from the heart.

Shakespeare.

Home-keeping hearts are happiest.

Longfellow.

The less heart, the more comfort.

Ninon de Lenclos.

Tears may be dried up, but the heart never.

Marguerite de Valois.

A heart to pity, and a hand to bless.

Churchill.

The heart will break, yet broken live on.

Byron.

O heart! love is thy bane and thy antidote.

George Sand.

Worse than a bloody hand is a hard heart.

Shelley.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Voltaire.

Better to have the poet’s heart than brain.

George MacDonald.

A good heart is worth gold.

Shakespeare.

The head is ever the dupe of the heart.

La Rochefoucauld.

The heart echoes the words of love.

Mme. de Krudener.

The full heart knows no rhetoric of words.

Bovee.

Leap hearts to lips, and in our kisses meet.

John Fletcher.

That hideous sight—a naked human heart.

Young.

I have a heart with room for every joy.

Bailey.

Love is the pass-key to the heart.

Mme. Necker.

The heart is the best logician.

Wendell Phillips.

  • For his heart was in his work, and the heart
  • Giveth grace unto every art.
  • Longfellow.

  • There is an evening twilight of the heart,
  • When its wild passion-waves are lulled to rest.
  • Fitz-Greene Halleck.

    Some hearts are hidden, some have not a heart.

    Crabbe.

    A heart to resolve, a head to contrive, and a hand to execute.

    Gibbon.

    A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart is at his left.

    Bible.

  • Maid of Athens, ere we part,
  • Give, oh, give me back my heart!
  • Byron.

  • Oh, the heart is a free and a fetterless thing—
  • A wave of the ocean, a bird on the wing.
  • Julia Pardoe.

  • The heart aye’s the part aye
  • That makes us right or wrong.
  • Burns.

  • Never morning wore
  • To evening but some heart did break.
  • Tennyson.

  • A temple of the Holy Ghost, and yet
  • Of lodging fiends.
  • Pollok.

    A noble heart, like the sun, showeth its greatest countenance in its lowest estate.

    Sir P. Sidney.

    None but God can satisfy the longings of an immortal soul; that as the heart was made for Him, so He only can fill it.

    Trench.

    Do you think that any one can move the heart but He that made it?

    John Lyly.

    When the heart speaks, glory itself is an illusion.

    Napoleon.

    The human heart has a sigh lonelier than the cry of the bittern.

    W. R. Alger.

    Mind is the partial side of men; the heart is everything.

    Rivarol.

    As the heart is, so is love to the heart. It partakes of its strength or weakness, its health or disease.

    Longfellow.

    His heart was one of those which most enamours us—wax to receive, and marble to retain.

    Byron.

    The heart is always young only in the recollection of those whom it has loved in youth.

    Arsène Houssaye.

    The heart must glow before the tongue can gild.

    W. R. Alger.

    The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?

    Bible.

    The wrinkles of the heart are more indelible than those of the brow.

    Madame Deluzy.

    Memory, wit, fancy, acuteness, cannot grow young again in old age; but the heart can.

    Richter.

    If wrong our hearts, our heads are right in vain.

    Young.

    What the heart has once owned and had, it shall never lose.

    Beecher.

    In aught that tries the heart, how few withstand the proof.

    Byron.

    A good heart will, at all times, betray the best head in the world.

    Fielding.

  • I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
  • For daws to peck at; I am not what I am.
  • Shakespeare.

    Be persuaded that your only treasures are those which you carry in your heart.

    Demophilus.

    The human heart is like heaven; the more angels the more room.

    Fredrika Bremer.

    To try to conceal our own heart is a bad means to read that of others.

    Rousseau.

    Of all the paths that lead to a woman’s heart, pity is the straightest.

    Beaumont.

    There is in the heart of woman such a deep well of love that no age can freeze it.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    A man’s own heart must ever be given to gain that of another.

    Goldsmith.

    All who know their own minds know not their own hearts.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

    Bible.

    Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.

    Bible.

    The heart is an astrologer that always divines the truth.

    Calderon.

    Where there is room in the heart, there is always room in the house.

    Moore.

    The heart of a good man is the sanctuary of God in this world.

    Mme. Necker.

    The heart of woman never grows old; when it has ceased to love, it has ceased to live.

    Rochepèdre.

    The nervous fluid in man is consumed by the brain; in women, by the heart.

    Stendhal.

    All things but one you can restore; the heart you get returns no more.

    Waller.

    It is a wonderful subduer—this need of love, this hunger of the heart.

    George Eliot.

    Look not to a woman’s head for her brains, but rather to her heart.

    Haliburton.

    The heart that has once been bathed in love’s pure fountain retains the pulse of youth forever.

    Landor.

    A woman’s heart is as intricate as a raveled skein of silk.

    Dumas, Père.

    Alas! that we must dwell—my heart and I—so far asunder.

    Christina G. Rossetti.

    The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite’s dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it.

    Victor Hugo.

    The heart is like an instrument whose strings steal nobler music from life’s many frets.

    Gerald Massey.

    The very gnarliest and hardest of hearts has some musical strings in it; but they are tuned differently in every one of us.

    Lowell.

  • A millstone and the human heart are driven ever round,
  • If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground.
  • Longfellow.

    A woman too often reasons from her heart; hence two-thirds of her mistakes and her troubles.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    A woman’s heart is just like a lithographer’s stone; what is once written upon it cannot be rubbed out.

    Thackeray.

    When the heart is still agitated by the remains of a passion, we are more ready to receive a new one than when we are entirely cured.

    La Rochefoucauld.

  • The poor too often turn away unheard,
  • From hearts that shut against them with a sound
  • That will be heard in heaven.
  • Longfellow.

    The heart of a girl is like a convent: the holier the cloister, the more charitable the door.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    The heart of a woman is never so full of affection that there does not remain a little corner for flattery and love.

    Marivaux.

    To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very small experience, provided he has a very large heart.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Some people’s hearts are shrunk in them, like dried nuts. You can hear ’em rattle as they walk.

    Douglas Jerrold.

    When a young man complains that a young lady has no heart, it is pretty certain that she has his.

    G. D. Prentice.

    The heart is like the tree that gives balm for the wounds of man only when the iron has pierced it.

    Chateaubriand.

    Every man must, in a measure, be alone in the world. No heart was ever cast in the same mould as that which we bear within us.

    Berne.

    What sad faces one always sees in the asylums for orphans! It is more fatal to neglect the heart than the head.

    Theodore Parker.

    Nothing is less in our power than the heart, and, far from commanding it, we are forced to obey it.

    Rousseau.

    The heart of a wise man should resemble a mirror, which reflects every object without being sullied by any.

    Confucius.

    The heart is like a musical instrument of many strings, all the chords of which require putting in harmony.

    Saadi.

    My heart resembles the ocean; has storm, and ebb and flow; and many a beautiful pearl lies hid in its depths below.

    Heinrich Heine.

  • And when once the young heart of a maiden is stolen,
  • The maiden herself will steal after it soon.
  • Moore.

  • Something the heart must have to cherish,
  • Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;
  • Something with passion clasp, or perish,
  • And in itself to ashes burn.
  • Longfellow.

    Wealth and want equally harden the human heart, as frost and fire are both alien to the human flesh. Famine and gluttony alike drive nature away from the heart of man.

    Theodore Parker.

    The heart must be at rest before the mind, like a quiet lake under an unclouded summer evening, can reflect the solemn starlight and the splendid mysteries of heaven.

    Macdonald Clarke.

    When the heart of man is serene and tranquil, he wants to enjoy nothing but himself: every movement, even corporeal movement, shakes the brimming nectar cup too rudely.

    Richter.

    A human heart is a skein of such imperceptibly and subtly interwoven threads that even the owner of it is often himself at a loss how to unravel it.

    Ruffini.

    A human heart can never grow old if it takes a lively interest in the pairing of birds, the reproduction of flowers, and the changing tints of autumn leaves.

    Mrs. L. M. Child.

    A good heart is the sun and moon, or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it shines bright and never changes, but keeps its course truly.

    Shakespeare.

    The heart never grows better by age, I fear rather worse; always harder. A young liar will be an old one; and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.

    Chesterfield.

    Many flowers open to the sun, but only one follows him constantly. Heart, be thou the sunflower, not only open to receive God’s blessing, but constant in looking to Him.

    Richter.

    There are treasures laid up in the heart—treasures of charity, piety, temperance, and soberness. These treasures a man takes with him beyond death, when he leaves this world.

    Buddhist Scriptures.

    What we call the heart is a nervous sensation, like shyness, which gradually disappears in society. It is fervent in the nursery, strong in the domestic circle, tumultuous at school.

    Beaconsfield.

    There is strength deep bedded in our hearts, of which we reck but little till the shafts of heaven have pierced its fragile dwelling. Must not earth be rent before her gems are found?

    Mrs. Hemans.

    The human heart is often the victim of the sensations of the moment; success intoxicates it to presumption, and disappointment dejects and terrifies it.

    Volney.

  • Oh, no! my heart can never be
  • Again in lightest hopes the same;
  • The love that lingers there for thee
  • Hath more of ashes than of flame.
  • Miss Landon.

  • The flush of youth soon passes from the face,
  • The spells of fancy from the mind depart;
  • The form may lose its symmetry, its grace,
  • But time can claim no victory o’er the heart.
  • Mrs. Dinnies.

    The human heart is like a millstone in a mill: when you put wheat under it, it turns and grinds and bruises the wheat to flour; if you put no wheat, it still grinds on, but then ’tis itself it grinds and wears away.

    Martin Luther.

    Men, as well as women, are oftener led by their hearts than their understandings. The way to the heart is through the senses; please their eyes and ears, and the work is half done.

    Chesterfield.

    The heart, when broken, is like sweet gums and spices when beaten; for as such cast their fragrant scent into the nostrils of men, so the heart, when broken, casts its sweet smell into the nostrils of God.

    Bunyan.

    Oh, if the loving, closed heart of a good woman should open before a man, how much controlled tenderness, how many veiled sacrifices and dumb virtues, would be seen reposing there!

    Richter.

    A loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.

    Whittier.

    When a woman’s heart is touched, when it is moved by love, then the electric spark is communicated and the fire of inspiration kindled: but even then she desires no more than to suffer or to die for what she loves.

    Countess Hahn-Hahn.

    There are no little events with the heart. It magnifies everything; it places in the same scale the fall of an empire and the dropping of a woman’s glove; and almost always the glove weighs more than the empire.

    Balzac.

    Nothing affects the heart like that which is purely from itself, and of its own nature; such as the beauty of sentiments, the grace of actions, the turn of characters, and the proportions and features of a human mind.

    Shaftesbury.

  • In thy heart there is a holy spot,
  • As ’mid the waste an isle of fount and palm,
  • Forever green!—the world’s breath enters not,
  • The passion-tempest may not break its calm,
  • ’Tis thine, all thine.
  • Mrs. Hemans.

    If you should take the human heart and listen to it, it would be like listening to a sea-shell; you would hear in it the hollow murmur of the infinite ocean to which it belongs, from which it draws its profoundest inspiration, and for which it yearns.

    Chapin.

    How mighty is the human heart, with all its complicated energies; this living source of all that moves the world! this temple of liberty, this kingdom of heaven, this altar of God, this throne of goodness, so beautiful in holiness, so generous in love!

    Henry Giles.

    There are chords in the human heart—strange, varying strings—which are only struck by accident; which will remain mute and senseless to appeals the most passionate and earnest, and respond at last to the slightest casual touch.

    Dickens.

    Intellect alone, however exalted, without strong feelings—without even, irritable sensibility—would be only like an immense magazine of powder, if there were no such element as fire in the natural world. It is the heart which is the spring and fountain of all eloquence.

    Lord Erskine.

  • The heart is like the sky, a part of heaven,
  • But changes, night and day, too, like the sky;
  • Now o’er it clouds and thunder must be driven,
  • And darkness and destruction as on high;
  • But when it hath been scorch’d and pierc’d and riven,
  • Its storms expire in water-drops; the eye
  • Pours forth, at last, the heart’s blood turn’d to tears.
  • Byron.

    What a proof of the Divine tenderness is there in the human heart itself, which is the organ and receptacle of so many sympathies! When we consider how exquisite are those conditions by which it is even made capable of so much suffering—the capabilities of a child’s heart, of a mother’s heart,—what must be the nature of Him who fashioned its depths, and strung its chords.

    Chapin.

    The wisdom of the Creator is in nothing seen more gloriously than the heart. It was necessary that it should be made capable of working forever without the cessation of a moment, without the least degree of weariness. It is so made; and the power of the Creator, in so constructing it, can in nothing be exceeded but by His wisdom.

    Hope.

  • Who made the heart, ’tis He alone,
  • Decidedly can try us,
  • He knows each chord—its various tone
  • Each spring its various bias:
  • Then at the balance let’s be mute,
  • We never can adjust it;
  • What’s done we partly may compute,
  • But know not what’s resisted.
  • Burns.