Henry Taylor Quotes

His food
Was glory, which was poison to his mind
And peril to his body.

To flesh your friend’s curiosity, and then endeavour to leave him with a hûc usque, is exposing your faculty of reticence to an unnecessary trial.

The world knows nothing of its greatest men.

Shy and proud men … are more liable than any others to fall into the hands of parasites and creatures of low character. For in the intimacies which are formed by shy men, they do not choose, but are chosen.

Such souls,
Whose sudden visitations daze the world,
Vanish like lighting, but they leave behind
A voice that in the distance far away
Wakens the slumbering ages.

For no syren did ever so charm the ear of the listener, as the listening ear has charmed the soul of the syren.

Good nature and kindness towards those with whom they come in personal contact, at the expense of public interests, that is of those whom they never see, is the besetting sin of public men.

It has been said of compliments, that men are most flattered by having the merits attributed to them which they least possess; but as it is only by liars that such compliments can be proffered, so it is only with fools that they can find a favourable acceptation.

Fear, indeed, is the mother of foresight…

Where there are large powers with little ambition (which will happen sometimes, though seldom) nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes; for she has given the machinery without the vis motrix.

An unreflected light did never yet
Dazzle the vision feminine.

Prodigality is indeed the vice of a weak nature, as avarice is of a strong one; it comes of a weak craving for those blandishments of the world which are easily to be had for money, and which, when obtained, are as much worse than worthless as a harlot's love is worse than none.

Shy and unready men are great betrayers of secrets; for there are few wants more urgent for the moment than the want of something to say.

Few things will occasion a statesman so much embarrassment as a prevailing opinion that he will yield that to importunity which he ought to proffer to less forward parties upon juster grounds, and that whether he grants or refuses no harm can be done by asking.

In our judgment of men, we are to beware of giving any great importance to occasional acts. By acts of occasional virtue weak men endeavour to redeem themselves in their own estimation, vain men to exalt themselves in that of mankind.