Hugh Blair Quotations

Exercise is the chief source of improvement in our faculties.

The great standard of literature as to purity and exactness of style is the Bible.

Gentleness corrects whatever is offensive in our manner.

What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.

Only mediocrity of enjoyment is allowed to man.

In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.

It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.

Compassion is an emotion of which we ought never to be ashamed. Graceful, particularly in youth, is the tear of sympathy, and the heart that melts at the tale of woe. We should not permit ease and indulgence to contract our affections, and wrap us up in a selfish enjoyment; but we should accustom ourselves to think of the distresses of human, life, of the solitary cottage; the dying parent, and the weeping orphan. Nor ought we ever to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

Taste consists in the power of judging; genius in the power of executing.

As the primary end of History is to record truth, impartiality, fidelity and accuracy are the fundamental qualities of an Historian.

The spirit of true religion breathes gentleness and affability; it gives a native, unaffected ease to the behavior; it is social, kind, cheerful; far removed from the cloudy and illiberal disposition which clouds the brow, sharpens the temper, and dejects the spirit.

True gentleness is founded on a sense of what we owe to him who made us and to the common nature which we all share. It arises from reflection on our own failings and wants, and from just views of the condition and duty of man. It is native feeling heightened and improved by principle.

Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.

Fretfulness of temper will generally characterize those who are negligent of order.

We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.

Human ability is an unequal match for the violent and unforeseen vicissitudes of the world.

To exult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman.

Those who are learning to compose and arrange their sentences with accuracy and order are learning, at the same time, to think with accuracy and order.

Nothing leads more directly to the breach of charity, and to the injury and molestation of our fellow-creatures, than the indulgence of an ill temper.

Worry not about the possible troubles of the future; for if they come, you are but anticipating and adding to their weight; and if they do not come, your worry is useless; and in either case it is weak and in vain, and a distrust of God's providence.