“Conflict, which rouses up the best and highest powers in some characters, in others not only jars the whole being, but paralyzes the faculties.”
Quote by Anna Brownell Jameson
“In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“Where the vivacity of the intellect and the strength of the passions exceed the development of the moral faculties the character is likely to be embittered or corrupted by extremes, either of adversity or prosperity.”
“The moment in which the spirit meets death is perhaps like the moment in which it is embraced in sleep. I suppose it never happened to any one to be conscious of the immediate transition from the waking to the sleeping state.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“To some characters, fame is like an intoxicating cup placed to the lips,--they do well to turn away from it who fear it will turn their heads. But to others fame is "love disguised," the love that answers to love in its widest, most exalted sense.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“Reputation being essentially contemporaneous, is always at the mercy of the Envious and the Ignorant. But Fame, whose very birth is posthumous, and which is only known to exist by the echo of its footsteps through congenial minds, can neither be increased nor diminished by any degree of wilfulness.”
“As the eye becomes blinded by fashion to positive deformity, so, through social conventionalism, the conscience becomes blinded to positive immorality.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“All government, all exercise of power, no matter in what form, which is not based in love and directed by knowledge, is a tyranny.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“If you don't respect me you're not gonna get that respect back.”
“A king or a prince becomes by accident a part of history. A poet or an artist becomes by nature and necessity a part of universal humanity.”
Source: A commonplace book of thoughts, memories and fancies, original and selected
“Nature and truth are one, and immutable, and inseparable as beauty and love.”
Source: Sketches of art, literature, and character [orig. publ. as Visits and sketches at home and abroad].
