William R. Alger

"Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain."

"When man seized the loadstone of science, the loadstar of superstition vanished in the clouds."

"Men often make up in wrath what they want in reason."

"The best aphorisms are pointed expressions of the results of observation, experience, and reflection. They are portable wisdom, the quintessential extracts of thought and feeling. They furnish the largest amount of intellectual stimulus and nutriment in the smallest compass. About every weak point in human nature, or vicious spot in human life, there is deposited a crystallization of warning and protective proverbs."

"To appreciate and use correctly a valuable maxim requires a genius, a vital appropriating exercise of mind, closely allied to that which first created it."

"In the rest of Nirvana all sorrows surcease: Only Buddha can guide to that city of Peace Whose inhabitants have the eternal release."

"God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe."

"Fill up the goblet and reach to me some! Drinking makes wise, but dry fasting makes glum."

"Beware the deadly fumes of that insane elation Which rises from the cup of mad impiety, And go, get drunk with that divine intoxication Which is more sober far than all sobriety."

"The moon is a silver pin-head vast, That holds the heaven's tent-hangings fast."

"Ten poor men sleep in peace on one straw heap, as Saadi sings, But the immensest empire is too narrow for two kings."

"As two floating planks meet and part on the sea, O friend! so I met and then drifted from thee."

"In the nine heavens are eight Paradises; Where is the ninth one? In the human breast. Only the blessed dwell in th' Paradises, But blessedness dwells in the human breast."

"A gray eye is a sly eye, And roguish is a brown one; Turn full upon me thy eye,— Ah, how its wavelets drown one! A blue eye is a true eye; Mysterious is a dark one, Which flashes like a spark-sun! A black eye is the best one."

"A thousand years a poor man watched Before the gate of Paradise: But while one little nap he snatched, It oped and shut. Ah! was he wise?"

"An Arab, by his earnest gaze, Has clothed a lovely maid with blushes; A smile within his eyelids plays And into words his longing gushes."

"With strength and patience all his grievous loads are borne, And from the world's rose-bed he only asks a thorn."