Arthur Helps was a British historian and essayist who lived in the 19th century. He is best known for his works on Spanish history, including his four-volume history of the Spanish conquest of the Americas. He was also a prolific literary critic, and wrote essays on topics ranging from politics to religion.
What is the most famous quote by Arthur Helps ?
Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.
— Arthur Helps
What can you learn from Arthur Helps (Life Lessons)
- Arthur Helps' work emphasizes the importance of understanding the past in order to make informed decisions in the present. He encourages us to look to history for insight into how to handle current issues and to learn from the mistakes of the past.
- Helps also encourages us to think critically about the sources we use to construct our understanding of history, and to recognize the biases and limitations of different sources.
- Finally, Helps reminds us that the study of history is an ongoing process, and that our interpretations of the past are constantly being revised and refined.
The most perspective Arthur Helps quotes that are life-changing and eye-opening
Following is a list of the best Arthur Helps quotes, including various Arthur Helps inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Arthur Helps.
Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.
He who is continually changing his point of view sees more, and more clearly, than one who, statue-like, forever stands upon the same pedestal; however lofty and well-placed that pedestal may be.
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
Reading is sometimes an ingenious device for avoiding thought.
To hear always, to think always, to learn always, it is thus that we live truly.
He who aspires to nothing, who learns nothing, is not worthy of living.
Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.
Selfishness, when it is punished by the world, is mostly punished because it is connected with egotism.
No man, or woman, was ever cured of love by discovering the falseness of his or her lover. The living together for three long, rainy days in the country has done more to dispel love than all the perfidies in love that have ever been committed.
Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.
Social reformer. quotes by Arthur Helps
No man who has not sat in the assemblies of men can know the light, odd and uncertain ways in which decisions are often arrived at.
No man has ever praised to persons equally-and pleased them both.
Alas! it is not the child but the boy that generally survives in the man.
War may be the game of kings, but, like the games at ancient Rome, it is generally exhibited to please and pacify the people.
What a blessing this smoking is! Perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America.
Any one who is much talked of be much maligned.
This seems to be a harsh conclusion; but when you consider how much more given men are to depreciate than to appreciate, you will acknowledge that there is some truth in the saying.
Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.
A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr.
Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. "Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man's I know."
The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds,--efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.
Almost all human affairs are tedious.
Everything is too long. Visits, dinners, concerts, plays, speeches, pleadings, essays, sermons, are too long. Pleasure and business labor equally under this defect, or, as I should rather say, this fatal super-abundance.
It has always appeared to me, that there is so much to be done in this world, that all self-inflicted suffering which cannot be turned to good account for others, is a loss - a loss, if you may so express it, to the spiritual world.
An official man is always an official man, and has a wild belief in the value of Reports.
They tell us that "Pity is akin to Love;" if so, Pity must be a poor relation.
Tolerance is the only real test of civilization.
Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place.
On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.
Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.
The man who could withstand, with his fellow-men in single line, a charge of cavalry may lose all command of himself on the occurrence of a fire in his own house, because of some homely reminiscence unknown to the observing bystander.
We are not so easily guided by our most prominent weaknesses as by those of which we are least aware.
The sense of danger is never, perhaps, so fully apprehended as when the danger has been overcome.
The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.
If you are often deceived by those around you, you may be sure that you deserve to be deceived; and that instead of railing at the general falseness of mankind, you have first to pronounce judgment on your own jealous tyranny, or on your own weak credulity.
The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.
Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.
It is quite impossible to understand the character of a person from one action, however striking that action may be.
It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.
Love, like the opening of the heavens to the Saints, shows for a moment, even to the dullest man, the possibilities of the human race. He has faith, hope, and charity for another being, perhaps but a creation of his imagination: still it is a great advance for a man to be profoundly loving even in his imaginations.
Most terrors are but spectral illusions. Only have the courage of the man who could walk up to his spectre seated in the chair before him, and sit down upon it; the horrid thing will not partake the chair with you.
Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.
The world will tolerate many vices, but not their diminutives.
The thing which makes one man greater than another, the quality by which we ought to measure greatness, is a man's capacity for loving.
Pride, if not the origin, is the medium of all wickedness-the atmosphere without which it would instantly die away.
Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.
Always win fools first. They talk much, and what they have once uttered they will stick to; whereas there is always time, up to the last moment, to bring before a wise man arguments that may entirely change his opinion.
A great many wise sayings have been uttered about the effects of solitary retirement; but the motives which impel men to seek it are not more various than the effects which it produces on different individuals. One thing is certain, that those who can with truth affirm that they are "never less alone than when alone," might generally add that they never feel more lonely than when not alone.
The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance.
We should lay up in our minds a store of goodly thoughts which will be a living treasure of knowledge always with us, and from which, at various times, and amidst all the shiftings of circumstances, we might be sure of drawing some comfort, guidance and sympathy.
The world will find out that part of your character which concerns it: that which especially concerns yourself, it will leave for you to discover.
The measure of civilization in a people is to be found in its just appreciation of the wrongfulness of war.
It is a weak thing to tell half your story, and then ask your friend's advice-a still weaker thing to take it.
A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.
No doubt hard work is a great police agent. If everybody were worked from morning till night, and then carefully locked up, the register of crime might be greatly diminished. But what would become of human nature? Where would be the room for growth in such a system of things? It is through sorrow and mirth, plenty and need, a variety of passions, circumstances, and temptations, even through sin and misery, that men's natures are developed.