Top 99 Quotes & Sayings by Arthur Helps

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Choose an author as you choose a friend.

Experience is the extract of suffering.

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

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.

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

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

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

Every happiness is a hostage to fortune.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.

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

The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.

Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion.

Tolerance is the only real test of civilization.

We should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts which will be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shiftings of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance and sympathy.

We are pleased with one who instantly assents to our opinions, but we love a proselyte.

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.

Men rattle their chains-to manifest their freedom.

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.

We are not so easily guided by our most prominent weaknesses as by those of which we are least aware.

War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people.

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.

Those who are successfully to lead their fellow-men, should have once possessed the nobler feelings. We have all known individuals whose magnanimity was not likely to be troublesome on any occasion; but then they betrayed their own interests by unwisely omitting the consideration, that such feelings might exist in the breasts of those whom they had to guide and govern: for they themselves cannot even remember the time when in their eyes justice appeared preferable to expediency, the happiness of others to self-interest, or the welfare of a State to the advancement of a party.

The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance.

You cannot ensure the gratitude of others for a favour conferred upon them in the way which is most agreeable to yourself.

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.

To hear always, to think always, to learn always, it is thus that we live truly. He who aspires to nothing, who learns nothing, is not worthy of living.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Selfishness, when it is punished by the world, is mostly punished because it is connected with egotism.

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

The very best financial presentation is one that's well thought out and anticipates any questions... answering them in advance.

There are few who would need advisers, if they were only accustomed to appeal to themselves in their calmest, holiest moments. If, when embarrassed with doubt as to any course of action, they would turn aside from the immediate tumult of the world, and from the vain speaking of those who "darken counsel by words without knowledge;" and would then commune with their hearts alone, at night, the heavens their silent counsellors, they would act not always in accordance with the wise men of this world, but with that wisdom which bringeth peace.

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

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

Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.

I do not know any way so sure of making others happy as of being so oneself, to begin with.

It takes a great man to make a great listener

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.

The reasons which any man offers to you for his own conduct betray his opinion of your character.

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

The world will find out that part of your character which concerns it: that which especially concerns yourself, it will leave for you to discover.

The world will tolerate many vices, but not their diminutives.

The worst use that can be made of success is to boast of it.

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

When we consider the incidents of former days, and perceive, while reviewing the long line of causes, how the most important events of our lives originated in the most trifling circumstances; how the beginning of our greatest happiness or greatest misery is to be attributed to a delay, to an accident, to a mistake; we learn a lesson of profound humility.