Quotes from Augustus Hare

Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.

A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt fated support them through great actions.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.

Truth, when witty, is the wittiest of all things.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

Friendship is love without its flowers or veil.

The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Only when the voice of duty is silent, or when it has already spoken, may we allowably think of the consequences of a particular action.

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.

Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.

Examples would indeed be excellent things were not people so modest that none will set, and so vain that none will follow them.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.