Arthur Helps

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.

The man of the house can destroy the pleasure of the household, but he cannot make it. That rests with the woman, and it is her greatest privilege.

The sense of danger is never, perhaps, so fully apprehended as when the danger has been overcome.

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

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

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.

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

Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.

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

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

Experience is the extract of suffering.

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.

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

Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.

We all admire the wisdom of people who come to us for advice.

Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.

The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice.

There are no better cosmetics than a severe temperance and purity, modesty and humility, a gracious temper and calmness of spirit; and there is no true beauty without the signatures of these graces in the very countenance.