Quote

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

Arthur Helps

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Arthur Helps
Age: 61 †
Born: 1813
Born: July 10
Died: 1875
Died: March 7
Biographer
Historian
Writer
Sir Arthur Helps
Reason
Giving
Refusing
Request
Lays
Simplicity
Foundation
Future
Remember

More quotes by Arthur Helps

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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
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Do not be deceived into thinking that how a man acts is the full picture.
Arthur Helps
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Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.
Arthur Helps
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The sense of danger is never, perhaps, so fully apprehended as when the danger has been overcome.
Arthur Helps
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Wise sayings often fall on barren ground, but a kind word is never thrown away.
Arthur Helps
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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
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Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.
Arthur Helps
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It is a weak thing to tell half your story, and then ask your friend's advice-a still weaker thing to take it.
Arthur Helps
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Selfishness, when it is punished by the world, is mostly punished because it is connected with egotism.
Arthur Helps
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Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.
Arthur Helps
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Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
Arthur Helps
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You cannot ensure the gratitude of others for a favour conferred upon them in the way which is most agreeable to yourself.
Arthur Helps
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Be cheerful [and grateful for the good that you have]: do not brood over fond hopes unrealized until a chain is fastened on each thought and wound around the heart. Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.
Arthur Helps
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Experience is the extract of suffering.
Arthur Helps
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If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.
Arthur Helps
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Thoughts there are, not to be translated into any language, and spirits alone can read them.
Arthur Helps
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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
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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
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Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.
Arthur Helps
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The worst use that can be made of success is to boast of it.
Arthur Helps