Elihu Burritt Quotes

• Knowledge cannot be stolen from us. It cannot be bought or sold. We may be poor, and the sheriff may come and sell our furniture, or drive away our cow, or take our pet lamb, and leave us homeless and penniless; but he cannot lay the law's hand upon the jewelry of our minds.

  Elihu Burritt

  Knowledge, Hands, Law

  47 Copy quote

• No human being can come into this world without increasing or diminishing the sum total of human happiness.

  Elihu Burritt

  World, Humans, Human Happiness

  Elihu Burritt, Mary Botham Howitt (1854). “Thoughts and things at home and abroad”, p.90

  10 Copy quote

• Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and Responsibility of our existence.

  Elihu Burritt

  Lying, Character, Responsibility

  Elihu Burritt (1850). “Miscellaneous Writings”, p.48

  16 Copy quote

• Kindness is the music of Good Will to men, and on this harp the smallest fingers may play heaven's sweetest tunes on earth.

  Elihu Burritt

  Kindness, Men, Play

  16 Copy quote

• Those orators who give us much noise and many words, but little argument and less wit, and who are the loudest when least lucid, should take a lesson from the great volume of nature; she often gives us the lightning without the thunder, but never the thunder without the lightning.

  Elihu Burritt

  Giving, Lightning, Oratory

  52 Copy quote

• Our minds are like certain vehicles,--when they have little to carry they make much noise about it, but when heavily loaded they run quietly.

  Elihu Burritt

  Running, Mind, Littles

  6 Copy quote

• All that I have accomplished ... has been by that plodding, patient, persevering process of accretion which builds the ant heap particle by particle, thought by thought, fact by fact.

  Elihu Burritt

  Time, Ants, Facts

  Elihu Burritt (1846). “Sparks from the Anvil”, p.12

  4 Copy quote

• Be ever gentle with the children God has given you; watch over them constantly; reprove them earnestly, but not in anger. In the forcible language of Scripture, "Be not bitter against them." "Yes, they are good boys," I once heard a kind father say. "I talk to them very much, but do not like to beat my, children--the world will beat them." It was a beautiful thought not elegantly expressed.

  Elihu Burritt

  Beautiful, Children, Father

  14 Copy quote

• Amongst the instrumentalities of love and peace, surely there can be no sweeter, softer, more effective voice than that of gentle, peace-breathing music.

  Elihu Burritt

  Breathing, Voice, Peace And Love

  6 Copy quote

• All the beautiful orders of architecture and creations of the pencil, all the conceptions of the beautiful in nature and art and humanity, are inventions extorted, as it were, from the mind to extend and increase the pleasures of sense.

  Elihu Burritt

  Beautiful, Art, Order

  Elihu Burritt, Mary Botham Howitt (1854). “Thoughts and things at home and abroad”, p.72

  4 Copy quote

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