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The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.

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
Birth
Child
Soul
Children
Imprisonment
Birthday

More quotes by William Gilmore Simms

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No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
William Gilmore Simms
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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.
William Gilmore Simms
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Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.
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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
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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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The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them.
William Gilmore Simms
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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
William Gilmore Simms
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Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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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
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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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The apothegm is the most portable form of Truth.... It is thus that the proverb answers where the sermon fails, as a well-charged pistol will do more execution than a whole barrel of gunpowder idly expended in the air.
William Gilmore Simms
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Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
William Gilmore Simms
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Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
William Gilmore Simms
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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
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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.
William Gilmore Simms
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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.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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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
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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.
William Gilmore Simms