Secret Quotes - Page 34

• There are some occasions in which a man must tell half his secret, in order to conceal the rest; but there is seldom one in which a man should tell all. Great skill is necessary to know how far to go, and where to stop.

  Doug Stanhope

  Men, Order, Skills

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• We shall never want to serve God in our real and secret hearts if He looms in our subconscious mind as an arbitrary Dictator or a Spoil-sport, or as one who takes advantage of His position to make us poor mortals feel guilty and afraid. We have not only to be impressed by the "size" and unlimited power of God, we have to be moved to genuine admiration, respect, and affection, if we are ever to worship Him.

  John Bertram Phillips

  Sports, Real, Heart

  John Bertram Phillips (1964). “Your God is too small”, Scribner Paper Fiction

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• No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.

  H. L. Mencken

  Dream, Children, Heart

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.325, Vintage

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• A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should.

  Henry Adams

  Government, People, Political

  Henry Adams (2015). “Democracy”, p.18, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Ah, the pretty whisperers! It was very well When the leaves were thick and green, awhile ago-- Leaves are secret-keepers; but since the last leaf fell There is nothing hidden from the eyes below.

  Sarah Chauncey Woolsey

  Eye, Green, Lasts

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• Whatever of goodness emanates from the soul, gathers its soft halo in the eyes; and if the heart be a lurking place of crime, the eyes are sure to betray the secret. A beautiful eye makes silence eloquent, a kind eye makes contradiction assent, an enraged eye makes beauty a deformity; so you see, forsooth, the little organ plays no inconsiderable, if not a dominant, part.

  Arthur Frederick Saunders

  Beautiful, Eye, Heart

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• The empire of Saturnus is gone by;
  Lord of the secret birth of things is he;
  Within the lap of earth, and in the depths
  Of the imagination dominates;
  And his are all things that eschew the light.
  The time is o'er of brooding and contrivance,
  For Jupiter, the lustrous, lordeth now,
  And the dark work, complete of preparation,
  He draws by force into the realm of light.
  Now must we hasten on to action, ere
  The scheme, and most auspicious positure
  Parts o'er my head, and takes once more its flight,
  For the heavens journey still, and adjourn not.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Dark, Journey, Light

  "Wallenstein" by Friedrich Schiller, translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Act I, sc. i, 1798.

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• I've been cursed for delving into the mysteries of life. Perhaps death is sacred, and I've profaned it. Oh, what a wonderful vision it was. I dreamed of being the first to give to the world the secret that God is so jealous of, the formula for life. Think of the power, to create a man. And I did, I did it, I created a man. And who knows, in time I could have trained him to do my will. I could have bred a race, I might even have found the secret of eternal life.

  William Hurlbut

  Life, Jealous, Power

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• A secret, like a chore, always seems to lead to another, one even more troublesome than the first.

  Bette Lord

  Firsts, Chores, Troublesome

  Bette Lord (1984). “In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• We may say of agreeableness, as distinct from beauty, that it consists in a symmetry of which we know not the rules, and a secret conformity of the features to each other, as also to the air and complexion of the person.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Beauty, Air, May

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• It is given to few persons to keep this secret well. Those who lay down rules too often break them, and the safest we are able to give is to listen much, to speak little, and to say nothing that that will ever give ground or regret.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Regret, Giving, Able

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• The secret of pleasing in conversation is not to explain too much everything; to say them half and leave a little for divination is a mark of the good opinion we have of others, and nothing flatters their self-love more.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Self, Half, Littles

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• Keep your own secret, and get out other people's. Keep your own temper, and artfully warm other people's. Counterwork your rivalswith diligence and dexterity, but at the same time with the utmost personal civility to them: and be firm without heat.

  Lord Chesterfield

  People, Dexterity, Politics

  Lord Philip Dormer Stanhope Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope Earl of Chesterfield (1855). “The Works of Lord Chesterfield: Including His Letters to His Son, Etc : to which is Prefixed, an Original Life of the Author”, p.483

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• You must be respectful and assenting, but without being servile and abject. You must be frank, but without indiscretion, and close, without being costive. You must keep up dignity of character, without the least pride of birth, or rank. You must be gay, within all the bounds of decency and respect; and grave, without the affectation of wisdom, which does not become the age of twenty. You must be essentially secret, without being dark and mysterious. You must be firm, and even bold, but with great seeming modesty.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Character, Gay, Dark

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• Secret Societies have existed among all peoples, savage and civilized, since the beginning of recorded history... It is beyond question that the secret societies of all ages have exercised a considerable degree of political influence.

  Manly Hall

  History, Political, Age

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• Emulation, even in brutes, is sensitively "nervous." See the tremor of the thoroughbred racer before he starts. The dray-horse does not tremble, but he does not emulate. It is not his work to run a race. Says Marcus Antoninus, "It is all one to a stone whether it be thrown upward or downward." Yet the emulation of a man of genius is seldom with his contemporaries, that is, inwardly in his mind, although outwardly in his act it would seem so. The competitors with whom his secret ambition seems to vie are the dead.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Running, Horse, Ambition

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• The great secrets of being courted are, to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Popularity, Seems, Delighted

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• Sooner mayest thou trust thy pocket to a pickpocket than give loyal friendship to the man who boasts of eyes to the heart never mounts in dew! Only when man weeps he should be alone, not because tears are weak, but they should be secret. Tears are akin to prayer,--Pharisees parade prayers, imposters parade tears.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Prayer, Eye, Heart

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• This world of sense, built by the imagination--how fair and foul it is! Like a fairy island in the sea of life, it smiles in sunlight and sleeps in green, known of the world not by communion of knowledge, but by personal, secret discovery!

  J. G. Holland

  Sleep, Islands, Discovery

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• Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

  John le Carre

  Ends, Trade, Bargains

  "The Mission Song". Book by John le Carre, September 2006.

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• To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also - He above all - is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Heart, Son, Love Is

  Entry for May 27, 1849, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• Children live in occupied territory. The brave and the foolhardy openly rebel against authority, whether harsh or benign. But most tread warily, outwardly accommodating themselves to alien mores and edicts while living in secret their iconoclastic and subversive lives.

  P. D. James

  Children, Brave, Rebel

  P. D. James (2007). “Time to Be in Earnest”, p.20, Vintage

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• I distrust Great Men... I believe in aristocracy, though... Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet... They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

  E. M. Forster

  Believe, Men, Class

  "What I Believe". Essay by E. M. Forster, 1938.

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• For even satire is a form of sympathy. It is the way our sympathy flows and recoils that really determines our lives. And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Sympathy, Lying, Ebb And Flow

  D. H. Lawrence, Michael Squires (2002). “Lady Chatterley's Lover and A Propos of 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'”, p.101, Cambridge University Press

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• The whole question of pornography seems to me a question of secrecy. Without secrecy there would be no pornography. But secrecy and modesty are two utterly different things. Secrecy has always an element of fear in it, amounting very often to hate. Modesty is gentle and reserved. Today, modesty is thrown to the winds, even in the presence of the grey guardians. But secrecy is hugged, being a vice in itself. And the attitude of the grey ones is: Dear young ladies, you may abandon all modesty, so long as you hug your dirty little secret.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Attitude, Hate, Dirty

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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