William Matthews Quotes

#1. God has so framed us as to make freedom of choice and action the very basis of all moral improvement, and all our faculties, mental and moral, resent and revolt against the idea of coercion.

William Matthews

#2. The fullest instruction, and the fullest enjoyment are never derived from books, till we have ventilated the ideas thus obtained in free and easy chat with others.

William Matthews

#3. Criminals are opportunists. If you've got a booming market, they're going to get away with more fraud.

William Matthews

#4. I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that's how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature. [from "Mingus at the Showplace"]

William Matthews

#5. We all have two childhoods, the unhappy one and the happy one.

William Matthews

#6. Be methodical if you would succeed in business, or in anything. Have a work for every moment, and mind the moment's work.

William Matthews

#7. As frost, raised to its utmost intensity, produces the sensation of fire, so any good quality, overwrought and pushed to excess, turns into its own contrary.

William Matthews

#8. Listen, / my wary one, it's far too late / to unlove each other.

William Matthews

#9. The countenance may be rightly defined as the title page which heralds the contents of the human volume, but like other title pages, it sometimes puzzles, often misleads, and often says nothing to the purpose.

William Matthews

#10. Talking, is a digestive process which is absolutely essential to the mental constitution of the man who devours many books.

William Matthews

#11. The power of music that poetry lacks is the ability to persuade without argument.

William Matthews

#12. There is a wide difference between general acquaintance and companionship. You may salute a man and exchange compliments with him daily, yet know nothing of his character, his inmost tastes arid feelings.

William Matthews

#13. The easiest way for me to lose interests is to know too much of what I want to say before I begin.

William Matthews

#14. The difficulties, hardships and trials of life, the obstacles ... are positive blessings. They knit the muscles more firmly, and teach self-reliance.

William Matthews

#15. Unless a man has trained himself for his chance, the chance will only make him ridiculous.

William Matthews

#16. It is not, of course, the subject that is or isn't dull, but the quality of attention that we do or do not pay to it. Dull subjects are those we have failed.

William Matthews

#17. What lasting progress was ever made in social reformation, except when every step was insured by appeals to the understanding and the will?

William Matthews

#18. With the "civilized" person contentment is a myth. From the cradle to the grave they are forever longing and striving after something better, an indefinable something, some new object yet unattained.

William Matthews

#19. The same disappointments in life will chasten and refine one man's spirit, embitter another's.

William Matthews

#20. Go to the desk. Stay at the desk. Thrive at the desk.

William Matthews

#21. Strive for excellence in your calling, but as a subsidiary to this: Do not fail to enrich your whole capital as man. To be a giant, and not a dwarf in your profession, you must always be growing. The man that has ceased to go up intellectually has begun to go down.

William Matthews

#22. One well-cultivated talent, deepened and enlarged, is worth one hundred shallow faculties.

William Matthews

#23. The petty cares, the minute anxieties, the infinite littles which go to make up the sum of human experience, like the invisible granules of powder, give the last and highest polish to a character.

William Matthews