Best 80 quotes of Arthur Helps on MyQuotes

A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.

A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are "never less alone than when alone," might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone.

Alas! it is not the child but the boy that generally survives in the man.

Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.

Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.

A man's action is only a picture book of his creed.

A mixture of admiration and pity is one of the surest recipes for affection.

An official man is always an official man, and has a wild belief in the value of Reports.

Any one who is much talked of be much maligned. This seems to be a harsh conclusion; but when you consider how much more given men are to depreciate than to appreciate, you will acknowledge that there is some truth in the saying.

A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know.

Be cheerful [and grateful for the good that you have]: do not brood over fond hopes unrealized until a chain is fastened on each thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.

Do not be deceived into thinking that how a man acts is the full picture.

Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.

Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.

Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.

Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.

He who is continually changing his point of view sees more, and more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.

If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.

If you would understand your own age, read the works of fiction produced in it. People in disguise speak freely.

In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little you may often look over it altogether.

Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.

Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?

It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.

It has been said with some meaning that if men would but rest in silence, they might always hear the music of the spheres.

It is a weak thing to tell half your story, and then ask your friend's advice-a still weaker thing to take it.

It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.

It is in length of patience, endurance and forbearance that so much of what is good in mankind and womankind is shown.

It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.

It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.

It takes a great man to make a great listener

Love, like the opening of the heavens to the Saints, shows for a moment, even to the dullest man, the possibilities of the human race. He has faith, hope, and charity for another being, perhaps but a creation of his imagination: still it is a great advance for a man to be profoundly loving even in his imaginations.

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.

Many a man has a kind of a kaleidoscope, where the bits of broken glass are his own merits and fortunes; and they fall into harmonious arrangements, and delight him, often most mischievously and to his ultimate detriment; but they are a present pleasure.

Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.

More than half the difficulties of the world would be allayed or removed by the exhibition of good temper.

Most terrors are but spectral illusions. Only have the courage of the man who could walk up to his spectre seated in the chair before him, and sit down upon it; the horrid thing will not partake the chair with you.

Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.

No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.

No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.

No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.

Offended vanity is the great separator in social life.

People resemble still more the time in which they live, than they resemble their fathers.

Pride, if not the origin, is the medium of all wickedness-the atmosphere without which it would instantly die away.

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm.

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.

Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.