Augustus John Cuthbert Hare (13 March 1834 – 22 January 1903) was an English writer and raconteur.
It is with flowers as with moral qualities; the bright are sometimes poisonous; but, I believe, never the sweet.
Many are ambitious of saying grand things, that is, of being grandiloquent.
It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life.
Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which God has manifested to us?
The ancients dreaded death: the Christian can only fear dying.
The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.
Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.
Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.
The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.
Pity is like eating mustard without beef.
A statesman, we are told, should follow public opinion. Doubtless, as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins and guiding them.
Man without religion is the creature of circumstances.
Some people carry their hearts in their heads; very many carry their heads in their hearts. The difficulty is to keep them apart, yet both actively working together.
A Christian is God Almighty's gentleman.
There is no being eloquent for atheism. In that exhausted receiver the mind cannot use its wings, - the clearest proof that it is out of its element.
Never put much confidence in such as put no confidence in others.
What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.
Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head.
Friendship closes its eye rather than see the moon eclipsed; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.
The question is not whether a doctrine is beautiful but whether it is true. When we wish to go to a place, we do not ask whether the road leads through a pretty country, but whether it is the right road.