Top 40 William Gilmore Simms Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “It is a bird-flight of the soul, when the heart declares itself in song. The affections that clothe themselves with wings are passions that have been subdued to virtues.”

— William Gilmore Simms

2. “The dread of criticism is the death of genius.”

— William Gilmore Simms

3. “Our true acquisitions lie only in our charities – we gain only as we give.”

— William Gilmore Simms

4. “Neither praise nor blame is the object of true criticism. Justly to discriminate, firmly to establish, wisely to prescribe and honestly to award – these are the true aims and duties of criticism.”

— William Gilmore Simms

5. “The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul.”

— William Gilmore Simms

6. “The only true source of politeness is consideration, – that vigilant moral sense which never loses sight of the rights, the claims, and the sensibilities of others. This is the one quality, over all others, necessary to make a gentleman.”

— William Gilmore Simms

7. “I believe that economists put decimal points in their forecasts to show they have a sense of humor.”

— William Gilmore Simms

8. “Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption, also.”

— William Gilmore Simms

9. “The only true source of politeness is consideration.”

— William Gilmore Simms

10. “Tact is one of the first mental virtues, the absence of which is often fatal to the best of talents; it supplies the place of many talents.”

— William Gilmore Simms

11. “What we call vice in our neighbor may be nothing less than a crude virtue. To him who knows nothing more of precious stones than he can learn from a daily contemplation of his breastpin, a diamond in the mine must be a very uncompromising sort of stone.”

— William Gilmore Simms

12. “We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.”

— William Gilmore Simms

13. “The fool is willing to pay for anything but wisdom. No man buys that of which he supposes himself to have an abundance already.”

— William Gilmore Simms

14. “To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.”

— William Gilmore Simms

15. “I know not that there is anything in nature more soothing to the mind than the contemplation of the moon, sailing, like some planetary bark, amidst a sea of bright azure. The subject is certainly hackneyed; the moon has been sung by poet and poetaster. Is there any marvel that it should be so?”

— William Gilmore Simms

16. “Genius is the very eye of intellect and the wing of thought; it is always in advance of its time, and is the pioneer for the generation which it precedes.”

— William Gilmore Simms

17. “No doubt solitude is wholesome, but so is abstinence after a surfeit. The true life of man is in society.”

— William Gilmore Simms

18. “He who would acquire fame must not show himself afraid of censure. The dread of censure is the death of genius.”

— William Gilmore Simms

19. “The birth of a child is the imprisonment of a soul. The soul must work its way out of prison, and, in doing so, provide itself with wings for a future journey. It is for each of us to determine whether our wings shall be those of an angel or a grub!”

— William Gilmore Simms

20. “Better that we should err in action than wholly refuse to perform. The storm is so much better than the calm, as it declares the presence of a living principle. Stagnation is something worse than death. It is corruption also.”

— William Gilmore Simms

21. “Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb; while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher’s dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes.”

— William Gilmore Simms

22. “Have I done anything for society? I have then done more for myself. Let that question and truth be always present to thy mind, and work without cessation.”

— William Gilmore Simms

23. “Distinction is an eminence that is attained but too frequently at the expense of a fireside.”

— William Gilmore Simms

24. “Revelation may not need the help of reason, but man does, even when in possession of revelation. Reason may be described as the candle in the man’s hand, to which revelation brings the necessary flame.”

— William Gilmore Simms

25. “Modesty is policy, no less than virtue.”

— William Gilmore Simms

26. “Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.”

— William Gilmore Simms

27. “But for that blindness which is inseparable from malice, what terrible powers of evil would it possess! Fortunately for the world, its venom, like that of the rattlesnake, when most poisonous, clouds the eye of the reptile, and defeats its aim.”

— William Gilmore Simms

28. “The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian.”

— William Gilmore Simms

29. “Vanity is so constantly solicitous of self, that even where its own claims are not interested, it indirectly seeks the aliment which it loves, by showing how little is deserved by others.”

— William Gilmore Simms

30. “There is a native baseness in the ambition which seeks beyond its desert, that never shows more conspicuously than when, no matter how, it temporarily gains its object.”

— William Gilmore Simms

31. “I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure.”

— William Gilmore Simms

32. “Tears are the natural penalties of pleasure. It is a law that we should pay for all that we enjoy.”

— William Gilmore Simms

33. “No errors of opinion can possibly be dangerous in a country where opinion is left free to grapple with them.”

— William Gilmore Simms

34. “The only rational liberty is that which is born of subjection, reared in the fear of God and the love of man.”

— William Gilmore Simms

35. “There is no doubt such a thing as chance, but I see no reason why Providence should not make use of it.”

— William Gilmore Simms

36. “The effect of character is always to command consideration. We sport and toy and laugh with men or women who have none, but we never confide in them.”

— William Gilmore Simms

37. “The wonder is not that the world is so easily governed, but that so small a number of persons will suffice for the purpose. There are dead weights in political and legislative bodies as in clocks, and hundreds answer as pulleys who would never do for politicians.”

— William Gilmore Simms

38. “Solitude bears the same relation to the mind that sleep does to the body. It affords it the necessary opportunities for repose and recovery.”

— William Gilmore Simms

39. “It should console us for the fact that sin has not totally disappeared from the world, that the saints are not wholly deprived of employment.”

— William Gilmore Simms

40. “Philosophy has its bugbears, as well as superstition.”

— William Gilmore Simms

41. “The proverb answers where the sermon fails.”

— William Gilmore Simms

42. “Most men remember obligations, but not often to be grateful; the proud are made sour by the remembrance and the vain silent.”

— William Gilmore Simms

43. “Our cares are the mothers, not only of our charities And virtues, but of our best joys and most cheering and enduring pleasures.”

— William Gilmore Simms

44. “Philosophy is reason with the eyes of the soul.”

— William Gilmore Simms

45. “The amiable is a duty most certainly, but must not be exercised at the expense of any of the virtues. He who seeks to do the amiable always, can only be successful at the frequent expense of his manhood.”

— William Gilmore Simms

46. “Our possessions are wholly in our performances. He owns nothing to whom the world owes nothing.”

— William Gilmore Simms