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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
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
Also
Something
Stagnation
Idleness
Corruption
Worse
Death
Action
More quotes by William Gilmore Simms
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
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
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 dread of criticism is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
William Gilmore Simms
Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.
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.
William Gilmore Simms
To feel oppressed by obligation is only to prove that we are incapable of a proper sentiment of gratitude. To receive favors from the unworthy is simply to admit that our selfishness is superior to our pride. Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful for them. The proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.
William Gilmore Simms
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
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
Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.
William Gilmore Simms
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
Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities - we gain only as we give.
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
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
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
The proverb answers where the sermon fails.
William Gilmore Simms
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.
William Gilmore Simms
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
William Gilmore Simms
