Benjamin Haydon Quotes

One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste.

The greatest geniuses have always attributed everything to God, as if conscious of being possessed of a spark of His divinity.

The longer a man lives in this world the more he must be convinced that all domestic quarrels had better never be obtruded on the public; for, let the husband be right, or let him be wrong, there is always a sympathy existing for women which is certain to give the man the worst of it.

How difficult it is to get men to believe that any other man can or does act from disinterestedness!

Never disregard what your enemies say. They may be severe, they may be prejudiced, they may be determined to see only in one direction, but still in that direction see clearly. They do not speak all the truth, but they generally speak the truth from one point of view; so far as that goes, attend to them.

Nothing is difficult; it is only we who are indolent.

Genius is nothing more than common faculties refined to a greater intensity. There are no astonishing ways of doing astonishing things. All astonishing things are done by ordinary materials.

There must be more malice than love in the hearts of all wits.

Do your duty, and don't swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.

This is an age of intellectual sauces, of essence, of distillation. We have conclusions without deductions, abridgments of history and abridgments of science without leading facts. We have animals for literature, Cabinet Encyclopaedias, Family Libraries, Diffusion Societies, and heaven knows what else! What is all this for? Not to add knowledge to the learned, but to tell points to the ignorant, without giving them the trouble to acquire the links. Oh! it is sad work. And the result will be injurious to all classes.

Newton's health, and confusion to mathematics.

Danger is the very basis of superstition. It produces a searching after help supernaturally when human means are no longer supposed to be available.

There surely is in human nature an inherent propensity to extract all the good out of all the evil.

Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you.

We are a compound of both here and hereafter; we shall be made responsible for the actions of both while here. Anything beyond this is beyond our power to prove, and would be of no real value if we could.

The safest principle through life, instead of reforming others, is to set about perfecting yourself.

Temperance in everything is requisite for happiness.

Satan is to be punished eternally in the end, but for a while he triumphs.

Art is a reality, not a definition; inasmuch as it approaches a reality, it approaches perfection, and inasmuch as it approaches a mere definition, it is imperfect and untrue.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

Invention is totally independent of the will.

Men who have reached and passed 45, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.