Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair Quotes
39 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
True gentleness is founded on a sense of what we owe to him who made us and to the common nature which we all share. It arises from reflection on our own failings and wants, and from just views of the condition and duty of man. It is native feeling heightened and improved by principle.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
To exult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Throughout the whole vegetable, sensible, and rational world, whatever makes progress towards maturity, as soon as it has passed that point, begins to verge towards decay.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
The slave who digs in the mine or labors at the oar can rejoice at the prospect of laying down his burden together with his life; but to the slave of guilt there arises no hope from death. On the contrary, he is obliged to look forward with constant terror to this most certain of all events, as the conclusion of all his hopes, and the commencement of his greatest miseries.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Life will frequently languish, even in the hands of the busy, if they have not some employment subsidiary to that which forms their main pursuit.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Between levity and cheerfulness there is a wide distinction; and the mind which is most open to levity is frequently a stranger to cheerfulness.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Though Milton is most distinguished for his sublimity, yet there is also much of the beautiful, the tender, and the pleasing in many parts of his work.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
By indulging this fretful temper you alienate those on whose affection much of your comfort depends.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
What we call human reason, is not the effort or ability of one, so much as it is the result of the reason of many, arising from lights mutually communicated, in consequence of discourse and writing.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
I have formerly given the general character of Mr. Addison's style and manner as natural and unaffected, easy and polite, and full of those graces which a flowery imagination diffuses over writing.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
An honest man will never employ an equivocal expression; a confused man may often utter ambiguous ones without any design.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
It is as natural for old age to be frail, as for the stalk to bend under the ripened ear, or for the autumnal leaf to change its hue. To this law all who went before you have submitted; and all who shall come after you must yield. After they have flourished for a season, they shall fade, like you, when the period of decline arrives, and bow under the pressure of years.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
We ought certainly to read blank verse so as to make every line sensible to the ear; at the same time, in doing so, every appearance of sing-song and tone must be carefully guarded against.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Embellish truth only with a view to gain it the more full and free admission into your hearer's minds; and your ornaments will, in that case, be simple, masculine, natural.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
How shocking must thy summons be, O Death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions!
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnished for the world to come.
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement;
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help;
But shrieks in vain.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Pride makes us esteem ourselves; vanity makes us desire the esteem of others. It is just to say, as Dean Swift has done, that a man is too proud to be vain.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Of all the means which human ingenuity has contrived for recalling the images of real objects, and awakening, by representation, similar emotions to those which were raised by the originals, none is so full and extensive as that which is created by words and writing.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
A good man acts with a vigour, and suffers with a patience, more than human, when he believes himself countenanced by the Almighty.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
That discipline which corrects the baseness of worldly passion, fortifies the heart with virtuous principles, enlightens the mind with useful knowledge, and furnishes it with enjoyment from within itself, is of more consequence to real felicity, than all the provision we can make of the goods of fortune.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
Nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures, than the indulgence of an ill temper.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
The sublime rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid.
Hugh Blair
Source
Report...
As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian.
Hugh Blair
1
2
Quote of the day
Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash.
Rita Mae Brown
Hugh Blair
Creative Commons
Born:
April 7, 1718
Died:
December 27, 1800
(aged 82)
Bio:
Hugh Blair was a Scottish minister of religion, author and rhetorician, considered one of the first great theorists of written discourse.
Known for:
Lectures on Rhetoric
Sermons
Most used words:
human
,
life
,
man
,
mind
,
age
,
reason
,
temper
,
time
,
disappointment
,
natural
,
writing
Hugh Blair on Wikipedia
Hugh Blair works on Wikisource
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Hugh Blair Quotes
Hugh Blair Short Quotes
British Philosopher Quotes
Philosopher Quotes
18th-century Philosopher Quotes
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes