Arthur Helps Quotes

57 Sourced Quotes

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

Arthur Helps
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.

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

Arthur Helps
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.

Arthur Helps
Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man's darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.

Arthur Helps
Almost all human affairs are tedious. Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.

Arthur Helps
Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.

Arthur Helps
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.

Arthur Helps
A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.

Arthur Helps
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.

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

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

Arthur Helps
Love, like the opening of the heavens to the saints, shows for a moment, even to the dullest person, the possibilities of the human race. One has faith, hope, and charity for another being, perhaps but the creation of the imagination; still it is a great advance for a person to be profoundly loving, even in his or her imagination.

Arthur Helps
The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.

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

Arthur Helps
It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.

Arthur Helps
We are frequently understood the least by those who have known us the longest.

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

Arthur Helps
The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.

Arthur Helps
Thoughts there are, not to be translated into any language, and spirits alone can read them.

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

Arthur Helps
The man who could withstand, with his fellow-men in single line, a charge of cavalry may lose all command of himself on the occurrence of a fire in his own house, because of some homely reminiscence unknown to the observing bystander.

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

Arthur Helps
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.

Arthur Helps
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.

Arthur Helps
Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.

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

Arthur Helps
I do not know that there is anything, except it be humility, which is so valuable as an incident of education as accuracy. And accuracy can be taught. Direct lies told to the world are as dust in the balance when weighed against the falsehoods of inaccuracy.

Arthur Helps
No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.

Arthur Helps
Men of much depth of mind can bear a great deal of counsel; for it does not easily deface their own character, nor render their purposes indistinct.

Arthur Helps