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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Joseph Roux

A face which is always serene possesses a mysterious and powerful attraction: sad hearts come to it as to the sun to warm themselves again.

A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.

Certain names always awake certain prejudices.

Everything that is exquisite hides itself.

Evil often triumphs, but never conquers.

Friends are rare, for the good reason that men are not common.

Friendship is the ideal; friends are the reality; reality always remains far apart from the ideal.

Friendship? two bodies and one soul.

Generosity is more charitable than wealth.

God is a shower to the heart burned up with grief; God is a sun to the face deluged with tears.

God often visits us, but most of the time we are not at home.

Great dejection often follows great enthusiasm.

Great souls are harmonious.

Have friends, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving.

In youth, one has tears without grief; in age, griefs without tears.

Interest, ambition, fortune, time, temper, love, all kill friendship.

It is impossible to be just if one is not generous.

Length of saying makes languor of hearing.

Let us pray! God is just, he tries us; God is pitiful, he will comfort us; let us pray.

Lofty mountains are full of springs; great hearts are full of tears.

Morality is the fruit of religion: to desire the former without the latter is to desire an orange without an orange-tree.

“Necessarius,” the friend, the man who is necessary.***A deep word, an ingenious word, a touching word. When will it be French?

No labor is hopeless.

Philosophers call God “the great unknown.” “The great mis-known would be more correct.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

Say nothing good of yourself, you will be distrusted; say nothing bad of yourself, you will be taken at your word.

Since, in possessing You, we possess all if we had nothing else, and in not possessing You we have nothing if we had all the rest, oh, my God! I will love You that I may possess You upon earth; and I will possess You that I may love You one day in heaven.

Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.

Success causes us to be more praised than known.

The city does not take away, neither does the country give, solitude; solitude is within us.

The habit of prayer communicates a penetrating sweetness to the glance, the voice, the smile, the tears,—to all one says, or does, or writes.

The historian must be a poet; not to find, but to find again; not to breathe life into beings, into imaginary deeds, but in order to re-animate and revive that which has been; to represent what time and space have placed at a distance from us.

The man abandoned by his friends, one after another, without just cause, will acquire the reputation of being hard to please, changeable, ungrateful, unsociable.

The orator is the mouth (os) of a nation.

The vital air of friendship is composed of confidence. Friendship perishes in proportion as this air diminishes.

“Time restores all things.” Wrong! Time restores many things, but eternity alone restores all.

We want our friend as a man of talent, less because he has talent than because he is our friend.

What is slander? A verdict of “guilty” pronounced in the absence of the accused, with closed doors, without defense or appeal, by an interested and prejudiced judge.