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Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.

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
Pleasure
Law
Enjoy
Natural
Penalties
Tears
Pay

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No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.
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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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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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The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
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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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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 birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
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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 is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues.
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Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities And virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures.
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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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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.
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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.
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He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
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Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
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The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
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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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I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.
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Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man's hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame.
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