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

Horace Smith

  • In losing fortune many a lucky elf
  • Has found himself.
  • As all our moral bitters are design’d
  • To brace the mind,
  • And renovate its healthy tone, the wise
  • Their sorest trials hail as blessings in disguise.
  • “Thy royal will be done—’tis just,”
  • Replied the wretch, and kissed the dust;
  • “Since, my last moments to assuage,
  • Your majesty’s humane decree
  • Has deigned to leave the choice to me,
  • I’ll die, so please you, of old age.”
  • Every man, like Narcissus, becomes enamored of the reflection of himself, only choosing a substance instead of a shadow. His love for any particular woman is self-love at second-hand, vanity reflected, compound egotism.

    Floral apostles! that in dewy splendor weep without woe, and blush without a crime.

    God’s lidless eye!

    Speech is a laggard and a sloth; but the eyes shoot out electric fluid that condenses all the elements of sentiment and passion in one single emanation.

    The invisible and loquacious maiden of the mountain passes.

    What laborious days, what watchings by the midnight lamp, what rackings of the brain, what hopes and fears, what long lives of laborious study, are here sublimized into print, and condensed into the narrow compass of these surrounding shelves!

    When a proud man thinks best of himself, then God and man think worst of him.

    Your voiceless lips, flowers, are living preachers—each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book.