Top 80 Arthur Helps Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Few have wished for memory so much as they have longed for forgetfulness.”

— Arthur Helps

52. “It has been said with some meaning that if men would but rest in silence, they might always hear the music of the spheres.”

— Arthur Helps

53. “The apparent foolishness of others is but too frequently our own ignorance.”

— Arthur Helps

54. “The most enthusiastic man in a cause is rarely chosen as the leader.”

— Arthur Helps

55. “It is better in some respects to be admired by those with whom you live than to be loved by them; and this not on account of any gratification of vanity, but because admiration is so much more tolerant than love.”

— Arthur Helps

56. “More than half the difficulties of the world would be allayed or removed by the exhibition of good temper.”

— Arthur Helps

57. “The world will tolerate many vices, but not their diminutives.”

— Arthur Helps

58. “An official man is always an official man, and he has a wild belief in the value of reports.”

— Arthur Helps

59. “Infinite toil would not enable you to sweep away a mist; but by ascending a little, you may often look over it altogether. So it is with our moral improvement: we wrestle fiercely with a vicious habit, which could have no hold upon us if we ascended into a higher moral atmosphere.”

— Arthur Helps

60. “Routine is not organization, any more than paralysis is order.”

— Arthur Helps

61. “It is a weak thing to tell half your story, and then ask your friend’s advice-a still weaker thing to take it.”

— Arthur Helps

62. “Do not shun this maxim because it is common-place. On the contrary, take the closest heed of what observant men, who would probably like to show originality, are yet constrained to repeat. Therein lies the marrow of the wisdom of the world.”

— Arthur Helps

63. “No man has ever praised to persons equally-and pleased them both.”

— Arthur Helps

64. “Selfishness, when it is punished by the world, is mostly punished because it is connected with egotism.”

— Arthur Helps

65. “Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers.”

— Arthur Helps

66. “Extremely foolish advice is likely to be uttered by those who are looking at the laboring vessel from the land.”

— Arthur Helps

67. “There is one statesman of the present day, of whom I always say that he would have escaped making the blunders that he has made if he had only ridden more in buses.”

— Arthur Helps

68. “The worst use that can be made of success is to boast of it.”

— Arthur Helps

69. “We are pleased with one who instantly assents to our opinions, but we love a proselyte.”

— Arthur Helps

70. “Always say a kind word if you can, if only that it may come in, perhaps, with singular opportuneness, entering some mournful man’s darkened room, like a beautiful firefly, whose happy circumvolutions he cannot but watch, forgetting his many troubles.”

— Arthur Helps

71. “Some persons, instead of making a religion for their God, are content to make a god of their religion.”

— Arthur Helps

72. “The heroic example of other days is in great part the source of the courage of each generation; and men walk up composedly to the most perilous enterprises, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were.”

— Arthur Helps

73. “A great and frequent error in our judgment of human nature is to suppose that those sentiments and feelings have no existence, which may be only for a time concealed. The precious metals are not found at the surface of the earth, except in sandy places.”

— Arthur Helps

74. “Entrust a secret to one whose importance will not be much increased by divulging it.”

— Arthur Helps

75. “Alas! it is not the child but the boy that generally survives in the man.”

— Arthur Helps

76. “We are frequently understood the least by those who have known us the longest.”

— Arthur Helps

77. “Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.”

— Arthur Helps

78. “The most common-place people become highly imaginative when they are in a passion. Whole dramas of insult, injury, and wrong pass before their minds, – efforts of creative genius, for there is sometimes not a fact to go upon.”

— Arthur Helps

79. “A sceptical young man one day conversing with the celebrated Dr. Parr, observed that he would believe nothing which he could not understand. “Then, young man, your creed will be the shortest of any man’s I know.””

— Arthur Helps

80. “There is hardly a more common error than that of taking the man who has one talent, for a genius.”

— Arthur Helps

81. “Many know how to please, but know not when they have ceased to give pleasure.”

— Arthur Helps

82. “I do not know of any sure way of making others happy as being so one’s self.”

— Arthur Helps

83. “Thoughts there are, not to be translated into any language, and spirits alone can read them.”

— Arthur Helps

84. “Pride, if not the origin, is the medium of all wickedness-the atmosphere without which it would instantly die away.”

— Arthur Helps