Quote collection
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"The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice."
"The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk."
"Rhetoric in serious discourses is like the flowers in corn; pleasing to those who come only for amusement, but prejudicial to him who would reap profit from it."
"Perpetual aiming at wit is a very bad part of conversation. It is done to support a character: it generally fails; it is a sort of insult on the company, and a restraint upon the speaker."
"Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend."
"Possession, they say, is eleven points of the law."
"This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air."
"Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable."
"Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath."
"Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame."
"There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest."
"Hobbes clearly proves, that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature."
"I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours."
"The chameleon, who is said to feed upon nothing but air, has of all animals the nimblest tongue."
"When a real genius appeares in this world, you'll know him by the fact that all the fools have allied against him."
"She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork."
"Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies."
"Praise is the daughter of present power."
"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."
"An English tongue, if refined to a certain standard, might perhaps be fixed forever."