Hugh Blair Quotes

39 Sourced Quotes

We have deprived ourselves of that liberty of transposition in the arrangement of words which the ancient languages enjoyed.

Hugh Blair
Fretfulness of temper will generally characterize those who are negligent of order.

Hugh Blair
The sublime rejects mean, low, or trivial expressions; but it is equally an enemy to such as are turgid.

Hugh Blair
Such is the infatuation of self-love, that, though in the general doctrine of the vanity of the world all men agree, yet almost every one flatters himself that his own case is it to be an exception from the common rule.

Hugh Blair
As if we did not suffer enough from the storms which beat upon us without, must we conspire also to harass one another?

Hugh Blair
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
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
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
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