C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.
Lew Wallace
As a rule, he fights well who has wrongs to redress; but vastly better fights he who, with wrongs as a spur, has also steadily before him a glorious result in prospect—a result in which he can discern balm for wounds, compensation for valor, remembrance and gratitude in the event of death.
Mother love * * * hath this unlikeness to any other love: Tender to the object, it can be infinitely tyrannical to itself, and thence all its power of self-sacrifice.
Sympathy is in great degree a result of the mood we are in at the moment; anger forbids the emotion. On the other hand, it is easiest taken on when we are in a state of most absolute self-satisfaction.
The vengeful thought that has root merely in the mind is but a dream of idlest sort which one clear day will dissipate; while revenge, the passion, is a disease of the heart which climbs up, up to the brain, and feeds itself on both alike.
The wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope—dream, if you will—in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such cases nothing intermediate will carry off the passion,—the quarrel is with fate. * * * It were well in such quarrels if fate were something tangible, to be despatched with a look or a blow, or a speaking personage with whom high words were possible; then the unhappy mortal would not always end the affair by punishing himself.
