Henry Home, Lord Kames

When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696 – 27 December 1782) was a Scottish writer, philosopher and judge who played a major role in Scotland's Agricultural Revolution. A central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, he was a founding member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh and active in The Select Society. Home acted as patron to some of the most influential thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment, including philosopher David Hume, economist Adam Smith, writer James Boswell, philosopher William Cullen and naturalist John Walker.

Quotes

Treasury of Thought (1881)

Quotes reported in: Maturin M. Ballou (ed.) Treasury of Thought, 7th edn. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1881)

• A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body, without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.
  • "Abstinence", p. 2

• We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.
  • "Anticipation", p. 25

• A man does but faintly relish that felicity which costs him nothing; happy they whom pain leads to pleasure.
  • "Appreciation", p. 30

• Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.
  • "Avarice", p. 42

• Beauty is a dangerous property, tending to corrupt the mind of the wife, though it soon loses its influence over the husband. A figure agreeable and engaging, which inspires affection, without the ebriety of love, is a much safer choice.
  • "Beauty", p. 49

• An agreeable figure and winning manner, which inspire affection without love, are always new. Beauty loses its relish, the graces never; after the longest acquaintance, they are no less agreeable than at first.
  • "Beauty", p. 49

• Benevolence is allied to few vices; selfishness to fewer virtues.
  • "Benevolence", p. 52

• Many shining actions owe their success to chance though the general or statesman runs away with the applause.
  • "Chance", p. 69

• An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong.
  • "Child", p. 76

• Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes.
  • "Conceit", p. 87

• If you should escape the censure of others, hope not to escape your own.
  • "Conscience", p. 91

• Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.
  • "Courage", p. 100

• Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.
  • "Cunning", p. 108

• Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.
  • "Custom", p. 110

• Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. Behold us already more than half dead and buried.
  • "Death", p. 114

• Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.
  • "Egotism", p. 141

• The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.
  • "Friendship", p. 191

• Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution, delicacy of taste to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion; but seldom delicacy of taste. Upon a man possessed of this blessing, the moral duties, no less than the fine arts, make a deep impression, and counterbalance every irregular desire; at the same time, a temper calm and sedate is not easily moved, even by a strong temptation.
  • "Genius", p. 199

• Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.
  • "Glory", p. 203

• Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession.
  • "Imagination", p. 253

• Ingratitude is of all crimes what in ourselves we account the most venial, in others the most unpardonable.
  • "Ingratitude", p. 263

• No man ever did a designed injury to another, without doing a greater to himself.
  • "Injury", p. 264

• When interest is at variance with conscience, any distinction to make them friends will serve the hollow-hearted.
  • "Interest", p. 269

• Light is no less favorable to merit than unfavorable to imposture.
  • "Light", p. 301

• The comparison of love to fire holds good in one respect, that the fiercer it burns the sooner it is extinguished.
  • "Love", p. 305

• Nothing more excites to everything noble and generous, than virtuous love.
  • "Love", p. 310

• As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship. Expostulations betwixt friends end generally ill, but well betwixt lovers.
  • "Love", p. 310

• Luxury possibly may contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.
  • "Luxury", p. 319

• A great mind will neither give an affront nor bear it.
  • "Magnanimity", p. 321

• Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the bustle of the world no object has time to make a deep impression.
  • "Passion", p. 381

• Nothing so apt to inflame passion as hopes and fears: a young woman of a calm temper and modest deportment is less apt to attract lovers, than one who is changeable and coquettish; a man of sense and gravity is less apt to succeed with a fine woman than the gay, the giddy, the fluttering coxcomb.
  • "Passion", p. 382

• True praise is frequently the lot of the humble; false praise is always confined to the great.
  • "Praise", p. 410

• The sordid meal of the Cynics contributed neither to their tranquillity nor to their modesty. Pride went with Diogenes into his tub; and there he had the presumption to command Alexander the haughtiest of all men.
  • "Pride", p. 418

• Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.
  • "Reputation", p. 445

• Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.
  • "Ridicule", p. 454

• Even dress is apt to inflame a man's opinion of himself.
  • "Self-conceit", p. 462

• There is no such fop as my young master of his lady-mother's making. She blows him up with self-conceit, and there he stops. She makes a man of him at twelve, and a boy all his life after.
  • "Self-conceit", p. 462

• The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.
  • "Self-deceit", p. 463

• When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.
  • "Self-examination", p. 464

• The most unhappy of all men is he who believes himself to be so.
  • "Unhappiness", p. 535

• Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.
  • "Wants", p. 547

• Were wisdom to be sold, she would give no price; every man is satisfied with the share he has from nature.
  • "Wisdom", p. 556

• Words have a separate effect on the mind abstracted from their signification and their imitative power; they are more or less agreeable to the ear by the fulness.
  • "Words", p. 565

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Henry Home, Lord Kames on Wikipedia