W. L. George Quotes

Hatred is like fire, it makes even light rubbish deadly.

It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.

It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self.

The pride of the body is a barrier against the gifts that purify the soul.

Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.

It's all one web, sir. The prosperity of the country is one web.

Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing.

Ignorance ... is a painless evil; so, I should think, is dirt, considering the merry faces that go along with it.

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternate vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us.

One soweth and another reapeth is a verity that applies to evil as well as good.

Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it.

There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence.

Our consciousness rarely registers the beginning of a growth within us any more than without us; there have been many circulation of the sap before we detect the smallest sign of the bud.

It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.

The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.

No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.

Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do more harm.

Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so .

For character too is a process and an unfolding. . . among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful. . . .

Hear Everything and judge for yourself

Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

It's them as take advantage that get advantage I' this world, I think: folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em.

Perspective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human beings languish, may not become picturesque through aerial distance!

Of a truth, Knowledge is power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience of what must be and what may be. . . .

'Character," says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms - character is destiny'.

It was not that she was out of temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands of her fine organism.

But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.

One way of getting an idea of our fellow-countrymen's miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.

The beauty of a lovely woman is like music.

Half the sorrows of women would be averted if they could repress the speech they know to be useless-nay, the speech they have resolved not to utter.

There is heroism even in the circles of hell for fellow-sinners who cling to each other in the fiery whirlwind and never recriminate.

Anger seek it prey,-- Something to tear with sharp-edged tooth and claw, Like not to go off hungry, leaving Love To feast on milk and honeycomb at will.

A man deep-wounded may feel too much pain To feel much anger.

Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

The dew-bead Gem of earth and sky begotten.

Mysterious haunts of echoes old and far, The voice divine of human loyalty.

We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger.

All things journey: sun and moon, Morning, noon, and afternoon, Night and all her stars; 'Twixt the east and western bars Round they journey, Come and go! We go with them!

Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone that by unexpected words.

Speech may be barren; but it is ridiculous to suppose that silence is always brooding on a nestful of eggs.

It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent - like a carrier pigeon.

A woman's lot is made for her by the love she accepts.

Every man's work, pursued steadily, tends to become an end in itself, and so to bridge over the loveless chasms of his life.

What believer sees a disturbing omission or infelicity? The text, whether of prophet or of poet, expands for whatever we can put into it, and even his bad grammar is sublime.

Perhaps the wind Wails so in winter for the summers dead, And all sad sounds are nature's funeral cries For what has been and is not.

When you see fair hair Be pitiful.

Tis a petty kind of fame At best, that comes of making violins; And saves no masses, either. Thou wilt go To purgatory none the less.

Where you have friends you should not go to inns.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth Of the unspoken.

Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them.