Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life; Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend; Love a...nd Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fa...ult for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
About the London shop girls of the meaner short no derogatory remarks can be too strong, just as no commendation can be too high o...f the courtesy, honest, and good nature of the girls who wait on you in the shops on Oxford and Bond Streets. This court-born, alley- nursed, street-bred girl is everywhere. Sometimes she is sober, oftener she is not. She sells you flowers and fruit on every corner, serves in bars and cheap eating-houses. We have nothing at all at home to correspond to her ...She wears flowers and paste jewels, but she seldom bathes, never has enough hairpins, and considers toothbrushes necessary only for members of the royal family.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Good breeding and good nature do incline us rather to help and raise people up to ourselves, than to mortify and depress them, and..., in truth, our own private interest concurs in it, as it is making ourselves so many friends, instead of so many enemies.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Dollars! All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the c...hance contributions that fell into the slow cauldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures were gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honour and fair-dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Nature and Good Intent, the more ample stowage-room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In this our talking America, we are ruined by our good nature and listening on all sides. This compliance takes away the power of ...being greatly useful.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There are persons who cannot make friends. Who are they? Those who cannot be friends. It is not the want of understanding or good ...nature, of entertaining or useful qualities, that you complain of: on the contrary, they have probably many points of attraction; but they have one that neutralises all these--they care nothing about you, and are neither the better nor worse for what you think of them. They manifest no joy at your approach; and when you leave them, it is with a feeling that they can do just as well without you. This is not sullenness, nor indifference, nor absence of mind; but they are intent solely on their own thoughts, and you are merely one of the subjects they exercise them upon. They live in society as in a solitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I for my sins am going to an afternoon representation of Othello by a German tragedian of some reputation, in whom a friend of min...e is much interested, and with whom I have promised to go--a piece of considerable good nature on my part, for I confess that I do not expect the German tragedian to have enough genius to reconcile me to the very disagreeable process of hearing Shakespeare pronounced with a foreign accent.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »