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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
World
Owns
Owes
Possessions
Wholly
Possession
Performances
Charity
Nothing
More quotes by 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
Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.
William Gilmore Simms
Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
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 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
Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
William Gilmore Simms
I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.
William Gilmore Simms
To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.
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
He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
William Gilmore Simms
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
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
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
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
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
Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
William Gilmore Simms
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.
William Gilmore Simms
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
Modesty is policy, no less than virtue.
William Gilmore Simms
