Quote

The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.

William Gilmore Simms

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Gilmore Simms
Age: 64 †
Born: 1806
Born: April 17
Died: 1870
Died: June 11
Historian
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Charleston
South Carolina
Fear
Men
Love
Reared
Subjection
Rational
God
Liberty
Born

More quotes by William Gilmore Simms

Image
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
Image
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
Image
I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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
Image
Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul. The soul must work its way out of prison, and, in doing so, provide itself with wings for a future journey. It is for each of us to determine whether our wings shall be those of an angel or a grub!
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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
Image
There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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
Image
Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities - we gain only as we give.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
William Gilmore Simms