Quote

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

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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
Poet
Bark
Subjects
Sailing
Hackneyed
Nature
Contemplation
Azure
Anything
Bright
Planetary
Mind
Subject
Amidst
Like
Sea
Sung
Moon
Soothing
Certainly
Marvel

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Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.
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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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No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.
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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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The dread of criticism is the death of genius.
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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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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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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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The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.
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Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.
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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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The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.
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Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.
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The proverb answers where the sermon fails.
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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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No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.
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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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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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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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He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.
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