Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair
Hugh Blair FRSEwas a Scottish minister of religion, author and rhetorician, considered one of the first great theorists of written discourse...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionTheologian
Date of Birth7 April 1718
fitness health exercise
Exercise is the chief source of improvement in our faculties.
heart flow manners
Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.
order temper
Fretfulness of temper will generally characterize those who are negligent of order.
world violent vicissitudes
Human ability is an unequal match for the violent and unforeseen vicissitudes of the world.
unhappy misery cruelty
To exult over the miseries of an unhappy creature is inhuman.
sports pain cuckoos
We ought never to sport with pain and distress in any of our amusements, or treat even the meanest insect with wanton cruelty.
reflection men views
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.
clouds giving cheerful
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.
heart
What ever purifies the heart also fortifies it.
sports pain selfish
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.
pride world offense
It is pride which fills the world with so much harshness and severity. We are rigorous to offenses as if we had never offended.
motivation eye action
In the eye of that Supreme Being to whom our whole internal frame is uncovered, dispositions hold the place of actions.