William R. Alger Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

Heart's-ease is a flower which blooms from the grave of desire.

William R. Alger
Willmott, the English essayist, says poetry is the natural religion of literature.

William R. Alger
The wealth of a soul is measured by how much it can feel; its poverty, by how little.

William R. Alger
The lower a man descends in his love, the higher he lifts his life.

William R. Alger
Often most telling and often most unfair; stimulated by want of a juster argument.

William R. Alger
Ten poor men sleep in peace on one straw heap, as Saadi sings,
But the immensest empire is too narrow for two kings.

William R. Alger
The flower which we do not pluck is the only one which never loses its beauty or its fragrance.

William R. Alger
True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is into what it ought to be.

William R. Alger
Public opinion is the atmosphere of society, without which the forces of the individual would collapse, and all the institutions of society fly into atoms.

William R. Alger
What is the highest secret of victory and peace? To will what God wills, and strike a league with destiny.

William R. Alger
A thousand years a poor man watched
Before the gate of Paradise:
But while one little nap he snatched,
It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?

William R. Alger
Ah, could the soul, like the body, have a mirror! It has, — a friend.

William R. Alger
The God of merely traditional believers is the great Absentee of the universe.

William R. Alger
As two floating planks meet and part on the sea,
O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee.

William R. Alger
The human heart has a sigh lonelier than the cry of the bittern.

William R. Alger
There is one thing diviner than duty, namely, the bond of obligation transmuted into liberty.

William R. Alger
Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad.

William R. Alger
The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs.

William R. Alger
In the nine heavens are eight Paradises;
Where is the ninth one? In the human breast.
Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises,
But blessedness dwells in the human breast.

William R. Alger
A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason.

William R. Alger
He who has no wish to be happier is the happiest of men.

William R. Alger
In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease:
Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace
Whose inhabitants have the eternal release.

William R. Alger
I would give more for the private esteem and love of one than for the public praise of ten thousand.

William R. Alger
A fretful fancy is constantly flinging its possessor into gratuitous tophets.

William R. Alger
A gray eye is a sly eye,
And roguish is a brown one;
Turn full upon me thy eye,—
Ah, how its wavelets drown one!
A blue eye is a true eye;
Mysterious is a dark one,
Which flashes like a spark-sun!
A black eye is the best one.

William R. Alger
Common sense is the average sensibility and intelligence of men undisturbed by individual peculiarities.

William R. Alger
Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind.

William R. Alger
The moon is a silver pin-head vast,
That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast.

William R. Alger
To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it.

William R. Alger
When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds.

William R. Alger