Henry Home, Lord Kames Quotes

25 Sourced Quotes

As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
An agreeable figure and winning manner, which inspire affection without love, are always new. Beauty loses its relish, the graces never, after the longest acquaintance, they are no less agreeable than at first.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Emotions are raised in us, not only by the qualities and actions of others, but also by their feelings. I cannot behold a man in distress, without partaking of his pain; nor in joy, without partaking of his pleasure.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
If you should escape the censure of others, hope not to escape your own.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. Behold us already more than half dead and buried.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
The sordid meal of the Cynics contributed neither to their tranquillity nor to their modesty. Pride went with Diogenes into his tub; and there he had the presumption to command Alexander the haughtiest of all men.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
The mind is never more highly gratified than in contemplating a natural landscape.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution; delicacy of taste, to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
To a zealot every one of his own sect is a saint, while the most upright of a different sect are to him children of perdition.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.

Henry Home, Lord Kames
A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

Henry Home, Lord Kames