A fly may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Abuse

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Achievement

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Achievement

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Acting and Actors

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Adversity

The trade of advertising is now so near perfection that it is not easy to propose any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Advertising

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Advertising

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Advice

When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Age and Aging

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Alcohol and Alcoholism

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Alcohol and Alcoholism

There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Alcohol and Alcoholism

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ambition

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Ambition

Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about America

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Anticipation

Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Anticipation

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Antipathy

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Approval

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Army and Navy

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Army and Navy

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Arts and Artists

They that have grown old in a single state are generally found to be morose, fretful and captious; tenacious of their own practices and maxims; soon offended by contradiction or negligence; and impatient of any association but with those that will watch their nod, and submit themselves to unlimited authority.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bachelor

The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bed

I have thought of a pulley to raise me gradually; but that would give me pain, as it would counteract my natural inclination. I would have something that can dissipate the inertia and give elasticity to the muscles. We can heat the body, we can cool it; we can give it tension or relaxation; and surely it is possible to bring it into a state in which rising from bed will not be a pain.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bed

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Belief

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Biography

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Birthdays

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Reading

Books that you carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are most useful after all.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Reading

A man ought to read just as his inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Books - Reading

Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bores and Boredom

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bores and Boredom

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Bragging

Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Calamity

I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cards

No member of society has the right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Censorship

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Censorship

Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Change

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charity

You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charity

There are charms made only for distance admiration.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Charm

Christianity is the highest perfection of humanity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Christians and Christianity

This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Churches

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cities and City Life

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Compassion

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Complaints and Complaining

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Complaints and Complaining

Hunger is never delicate; they who are seldom gorged to the full with praise may be safely fed with gross compliments, for the appetite must be satisfied before it is disgusted.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Compliments

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Compromise

Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Concentration

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Confidence

There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Confidence

It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Confidence

The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Contrast

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Conversation

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Conversation

No two men can be half an hour together but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Cooperation

Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Courage

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Courage

Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Courage

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Coward and Cowardice

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Creation

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works. An assault upon a town is a bad thing; but starving it is still worse.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Critics and Criticism

Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Curiosity

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Curiosity

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Daughters

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Death and Dying

Small debts are like small gun shot; they are rattling around us on all sides and one can scarcely escape being wounded. Large debts are like canons, they produce a loud noise, but are of little danger.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Debt

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Deception

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Desire

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Desire

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Determination

Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to be quite true.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dictionaries

Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dictionaries

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dictionaries

Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Diligence

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Disappointments

No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Disapproval

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Disease

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dress

Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Dullness

Read your own compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Editing and Editors

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Effort

A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Entertainment

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Enthusiasm

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Envy

In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Epitaphs

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Equality

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Equality

It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Equality

They teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing master.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Example

Exercise is labor without weariness.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Exercise

I know not anything more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Expectation

As to the rout that is made about people who are ruined by extravagance, it is no matter to the nation that some individuals suffer. When so much general productive exertion is the consequence of luxury, the nation does not care though there are debtors; nay, they would not care though their creditors were there too.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Extravagance

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fame

To get a name can happen but to few; it is one of the few things that cannot be brought. It is the free gift of mankind, which must be deserved before it will be granted, and is at last unwillingly bestowed.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fame

Parents and children seldom act in concert: each child endeavors to appropriate the esteem or fondness of the parents, and the parents, with yet less temptation, betray each other to their children.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Family

Shame arises from the fear of men, conscience from the fear of God.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fear

Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fear

Fly fishing may be a very pleasant amusement; but angling or float fishing I can only compare to a stick and a string, with a worm at one end and a fool at the other.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Fishing

Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Flattery

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Flattery

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Flirting

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Focus

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Focus

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Food and Eating

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Food and Eating

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Freedom

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Freedom of Speech

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone; one should keep his friendships in constant repair.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

Never, my dear Sir, do you take it into your head that I do not love you; you may settle yourself in full confidence both of my love and my esteem; I love you as a kind man, I value you as a worthy man, and hope in time to reverence you as a man of exemplary piety.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

The endearing elegance of female friendship.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

To let friendship die away by negligence and silence is certainly not wise. It is voluntarily to throw away one of the greatest comforts of the weary pilgrimage.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Friends and Friendship

The future is purchased by the present.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Future

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Future

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gambling

Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Generations

Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Generosity

The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Glory

The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Good and Evil

I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Government

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gratitude

He was dull in a new way, and that made many think him great.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Greatness

No one ever became great by imitation.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Greatness

The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Greatness

Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Greed

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Grief

Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Grief

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Gullibility

The habit of looking on the best side of every event is worth more than a thousand pounds a years.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Habit

The chains of habit are generally too week to be felt, until they are too strong to be broken.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Habit

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found; and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, rather, a manner of traveling.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

For who is pleased with himself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Happiness

Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Heroes and Heroism

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about History and Historians

It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Home

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Home

The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hope

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hope

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged must end in disappointment.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hope

I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Humankind

I am a great friend to public amusements, for they keep the people from vice.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Humor

It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Hunting

Sir, a man may be so much of everything, that he is nothing of anything.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Identity

As peace is the end of war, so to be idle is the ultimate purpose of the busy.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Idleness

Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Idleness

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Imagination

Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Imitation

No man was ever great by imitation.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Imitation

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Indifference

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Inequality

No man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others, will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excites our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear is to fill a vacant hour with prattle, and be forgotten.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Insignificance

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Integrity

It is easy to talk of sitting at home contented, when others are seeing or making shows. But not to have been where it is supposed, and seldom supposed falsely, that all would go if they could; to be able to say nothing when everyone is talking; to have no opinion when everyone is judging; to hear exclamations of rapture without power to depress; to listen to falsehoods without right to contradict, is, after all, a state of temporary inferiority, in which the mind is rather hardened by stubbornness, than supported by fortitude. If the world be worth winning let us enjoy it, if it is to be despised let us despise it by conviction. But the world is not to be despised but as it is compared with something better.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Involvement

I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Jokes and Jokers

A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Judgment and Judges

To cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Kindness

To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Kindness

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Kindness

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

More knowledge may be gained of a man's real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

Knowledge is of two kinds: We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information about it.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

Knowledge always demands increase; it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but will afterwards always propagate itself.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Knowledge

Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Labor

Labor, if it were not necessary for existence, would be indispensable for the happiness of man.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Labor

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Language

I am always sorry when any language is lost, because languages are the pedigrees of nations.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Language

Language is the dress of thought.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Language

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Laughter

Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Law and Lawyers

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Law and Lawyers

Turn on the prudent ant thy heedful eyes. Observe her labors, sluggard, and be wise.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Laziness

Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Learning

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Leisure

In a man's letters you know, Madam, his soul lies naked, his letters are only the mirror of his breast, whatever passes within him is shown undisguised in its natural process. Nothing is inverted, nothing distorted, you see systems in their elements, you discover actions in their motives.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Letters

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation -- a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Letters

No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Libraries

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Life and Living

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Love

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Marriage

It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Marriage

Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Marriage

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Marriage

Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Marriage

I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Mathematics

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Melancholy

The true art of memory is the art of attention.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Memory

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Memory

Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Men and Women

The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs, and their subtlety surprises; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Metaphysics

There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Mind

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Misers and Misery

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Misfortunes

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Mistakes

Whatever you have spend less.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Money

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
Send to friend | View quote | Quotes about Money

Cruel with guilt, and daring with despair, the midnight murd