William Gilmore Simms Quotes

But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim.

It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment.

Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities and virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures.

There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.

The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.

The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.

The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them.

Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.

We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

... there is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.

Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.

Vanity is so constantly solicitous of self, that even where its own claims are not interested, it indirectly seeks the aliment which it loves, by showing how little is deserved by others.

Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities. We gain only as we give.

The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.