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The only true source of politeness is consideration.

William Gilmore Simms

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William Gilmore Simms
Age: 64 †
Born: 1806
Born: April 17
Died: 1870
Died: June 11
Historian
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Charleston
South Carolina
Politeness
Polite
Consideration
Source
True

More quotes by William Gilmore Simms

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I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplation of the moon, sailing, like some planetary bark, amidst a sea of bright azure. The subject is certainly hackneyed the moon has been sung by poet and poetaster. Is there any marvel that it should be so?
William Gilmore Simms
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I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.
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What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone.
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Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
William Gilmore Simms
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Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
William Gilmore Simms
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Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.
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Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful the proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.
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The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.
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No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
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The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already.
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To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
William Gilmore Simms
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Ambition is frequently the only refuge which life has left to the denied or mortified affections. We chide at the grasping eye, the daring wing, the soul that seems to thirst for sovereignty only, and know not that the flight of this ambitious bird has been from a bosom or home that is filled with ashes.
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No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.
William Gilmore Simms
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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
William Gilmore Simms
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The only true source of politeness is consideration,--that vigilant moral sense which never loses sight of the rights, the claims, and the sensibilities of others. This is the one quality, over all others, necessary to make a gentleman.
William Gilmore Simms
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I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.
William Gilmore Simms
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Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes.
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It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment.
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But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim.
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Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities - we gain only as we give.
William Gilmore Simms