Occasions are rare; and those, who know how to seize upon them, are rarer.
A gentleman, is a rarer thing than some of us think for. Which of us can point out many such in his circle--men whose aims are generous, whose truth is constant and elevated; who can look the world honestly in the face, with an equal manly sympathy for the great and the small? We all know a hundred whose coats are well made, and a score who have excellent manners; but of gentlemen how many? Let us take a little scrap of paper, and each make out his list.
The rarer action is in virtue than in vengeance.
Kind thoughts are rarer than either kind words or deeds. They imply a great deal of thinking about others. This in itself is rare. But they also imply a great deal of thinking about others without the thoughts being criticisms. This is rarer still.
Boldness becomes rarer, the higher the rank.
Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.
It is also rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert of the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.
Aristocrats need not be rich, but they must be free, and in the modern world freedom grows rarer the more we prate about it.
The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.
In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women. as they are still today, A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.
In my experience, it is rarer to find a really happy person in a circle of millionaires than among vagabonds.
Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed.
Nothing seems to me to be rarer today then genuine hypocrisy. I greatly suspect that this plant finds the mild atmosphere of our culture unendurable. Hypocrisy has its place in the ages of strong belief: in which even when one is compelled to exhibit a different belief one does not abandon the belief one already has.
There are ever two ways of striving to fill one's place in the world: one is by seeking to prove one's self useful; the other, by striving to render one's self useless. The first way is the commoner and the more attractive; the second is the rarer and more noble.
I think it inevitably follows, that as new species in the course of time are formed through natural selection, others will become rarer and rarer, and finally extinct. The forms which stand in closest competition with those undergoing modification and improvement will naturally suffer most.
I eat meat, the rarer the better.
Nothing is rarer than real goodness.
All history shows that, in exact proportion as nations advance in civilisation, the accounts of miracles taking place among them become rarer and rarer, until at last they entirely cease.
Rare as is true love, true friendship is rarer.
Comedians are a much rarer and far more valuable commodity than all the gold and precious stones in the world.
