Quote

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.

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
Men
Helping
Candle
Hands
Revelations
Doe
Flames
May
Possession
Reason
Brings
Need
Necessary
Flame
Needs
Hand
Described
Even
Help
Revelation

More quotes by William Gilmore Simms

Image
The only true source of politeness is consideration.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities - we gain only as we give.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to award - these are the true aims and duties of criticism.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
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.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
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
The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already.
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
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
Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought it is always in advance of its time, and is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes.
William Gilmore Simms
Image
Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
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
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.
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
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.
William Gilmore Simms