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Tact is one of the first of mental virtues, the absence of which is frequently fatal to the best of talents. Without denying that it is a talent of itself, it will suffice if we admit that it supplies the place of many talents.
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
Place
Talents
Best
Frequently
Firsts
Virtues
Without
Admit
Suffice
First
Absence
Tact
Many
Mental
Denying
Talent
Supplies
Virtue
Fatal
More quotes by William Gilmore Simms
Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
William Gilmore Simms
There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.
William Gilmore Simms
No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
William Gilmore Simms
The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
William Gilmore Simms
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
William Gilmore Simms
Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
William Gilmore Simms
Vanity is so constantly solicitous of self, that even where its own claims are not interested, it indirectly seeks the aliment which it loves, by showing how little is deserved by others.
William Gilmore Simms
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
William Gilmore Simms
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.
William Gilmore Simms
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
The proverb answers where the sermon fails.
William Gilmore Simms
Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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
Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful the proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.
William Gilmore Simms
The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.
William Gilmore Simms
Modesty is policy, no less than virtue.
William Gilmore Simms
The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.
William Gilmore Simms
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.
William Gilmore Simms
Have I done anything for society? I have then done more for myself. Let that question and truth be always present to thy mind, and work without cessation.
William Gilmore Simms