C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Influence
Men are what their mothers made them.
I am a part of all that I have met.
Woman’s influence embraces the whole of life.
You can only make others better by being good yourself.
Influence is exerted by every human being from the hour of birth to that of death.
It is by women that nature writes on the hearts of men.
A woman is more influenced by what she divines than by what she is told.
If woman lost us Eden, such as she alone restore it!
We perceive and are affected by changes too subtle to be described.
Not one false man but does uncountable mischief.
The humblest individual exerts some influence, either for good or evil, upon others.
The serene, silent beauty of a holy life is the most powerful influence in the world, next to the might of the Spirit of God.
Blessed influence of one true loving human soul on another.
It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.
Race and temperament go for much in influencing opinion.
He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.
Every thought which genius and piety throw into the world alters the world.
The influence of woman will ever be exercised directly in all good or evil. Give her, then, such light as she is capable of receiving.
Nothing more surely cultivates and embellishes a man than association with refined and virtuous women.
Every man is a missionary, now and forever, for good or for evil, whether he intends or designs it or not.
No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness.
If I can put one touch of a rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.
The work an unknown good man has done is like a vein of water flowing hidden underground, secretly making the ground green.
We must succumb to the general influence of the times. No man can be of the tenth century, if he would; be must be a man of the nineteenth century.
Would Shakespeare and Raleigh have done their best, would that galaxy have shone so bright in the heavens had there been no Elizabeth on the throne?
No man or woman of the humblest sort can really be strong, gentle, pure, and good, without somebody being helped and comforted by the very existence of that goodness.
The career of a great man remains an enduring monument of human energy. The man dies and disappears, but his thoughts and acts survive, and leave an indelible stamp upon his race.
It is an old saying, and one of fearful and fathomless import, that we are forming characters for eternity. Forming characters! Whose? our own or others? Both—and in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence. Who is sufficient for the thought?
It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon’s presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very loose way of talking; but the idea is a very different one from that of his presence at a battle being equal to a reinforcement of forty thousand men.