Quote collection
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"Sir, if you wish to have a just notion of the magnitude of this city, you must not be satisfied with seeing its great streets and squares, but must survey the innumerable little lanes and courts. It is not in the showy evolutions of buildings, but in the multiplicity of human habitations which are crowded together, that the wonderful immensity of London consists."
"Before dinner men meet with great inequality of understanding."
"Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees."
"Hunger is never delicate."
"Apologies are seldom of any use."
"Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle."
"All wonder is the effect of novelty on ignorance."
"That is the happiest conversation where there is no competition, no vanity, but a calm, quiet interchange of sentiments..."
"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors."
"This man [Chesterfield], I thought, had been a Lord among wits; but I find he is only a wit among Lords."
"Wisdom and virtue are by no means sufficient, without the supplemental laws of good-breeding, to secure freedom from degenerating into rudeness, or self esteem from swelling into insolence. A thousand incivilities may be committed, and a thousand offices neglected. without any remorse of conscience, or reproach from reason."
"The business of life summons us away from useless grief, and calls us to the exercise of those virtues of which we are lamenting our deprivation."
"Much is due to those who first broke the way to knowledge, and left only to their successors the task of smoothing it."
"He who praises everybody, praises nobody."
"Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free."
"It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence."
"There are three distinct kind of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules."
"It is scarcely credible to what degree discernment may be dazzled by the mist of pride, and wisdom infatuated by the intoxication of flattery."
"If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination."
"Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. he whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you."