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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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William Gilmore Simms
Age: 64 †
Born: 1806
Born: April 17
Died: 1870
Died: June 11
Historian
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Charleston
South Carolina
Performances
Charity
Nothing
World
Owns
Owes
Possessions
Wholly
Possession
More quotes by 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 dread of criticism is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
William Gilmore Simms
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
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
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
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
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
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
Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities - we gain only as we give.
William Gilmore Simms
Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
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
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
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
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
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?
William Gilmore Simms
Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
William Gilmore Simms
Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
William Gilmore Simms
No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.
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
