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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
Children
Imprisonment
Birthday
Birth
Child
Soul

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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.
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Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
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To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
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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.
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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.
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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 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.
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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 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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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.
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I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplation of the moon, sailing, like some planetary bark, amidst a sea of bright azure. The subject is certainly hackneyed the moon has been sung by poet and poetaster. Is there any marvel that it should be so?
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The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
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No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
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The only true source of politeness is consideration.
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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
William Gilmore Simms