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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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William Gilmore Simms
Age: 64 †
Born: 1806
Born: April 17
Died: 1870
Died: June 11
Historian
Lawyer
Novelist
Poet
Charleston
South Carolina
Effects
Confide
Laughing
Toys
Sports
Consideration
Character
Sport
Women
Command
Always
Effect
Never
None
Men
Laugh

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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.
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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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No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
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Modesty is policy, no less than virtue.
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Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.
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Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.
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Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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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.
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Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.
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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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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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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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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.
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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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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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Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities And virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures.
William Gilmore Simms
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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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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 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