Quote collection
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"I am of the level with common Astrologers; who, with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world."
"Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth."
"There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure."
"Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person."
"Though Diogenes lived in a tub, there might be, for aught I know, as much pride under his rags, as in the fine-spun garments of the divine Plato."
"A carpenter is known by his chips."
"In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married."
"Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion."
"Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind."
"This made me reflect, how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him."
"I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves."
"For to enter the palace of learning at the great gate requires an expense of time and forms, therefore men of much haste and little ceremony are content to get in by the back-door"
"Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest."
"If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them."
"Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings; Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung."
"Philosophy! the lumber of the schools."
"Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb."
"Love why do we one passion call, When 'tis a compound of them all? Where hot and cold, where sharp and sweet, In all their equipages meet; Where pleasures mix'd with pains appear, Sorrow with joy, and hope with fear."
"What some people invent the rest enlarge."
"What vexes me most is, that my female friends, who could bear me very well a dozen years ago, have now forsaken me, although I am not so old in proportion to them as I formerly was: which I can prove by arithmetic, for then I was double their age, which now I am not. Letter to Alexander Pope. 7 Feb. 1736."