Quote collection
1.7K quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain."
"The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy."
"The life of a solitary man will be certainly miserable, but not certainly devout."
"Probably no one will ever know whether it is better to wear a nightcap or not."
"The hapless wit has his labors always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and one jest only raises expectation of another."
"A country gentleman should bring his lady to visit London as soon as he can, that they may have agreeable topicks for conversation when they are by themselves."
"Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency."
"Whoever shall review his life, will find that the whole tenor of his conduct has been determined by some accident of no apparent moment."
"Norway, too, has noble prospects; and Lapland is remarkable for prodigious noble wild prospects. But, Sir, let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England!"
"The hopes of zeal are not wholly groundless."
"In matters of business, no woman stops at integrity."
"A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company"
"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions."
"Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it."
"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."
"We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting."
"When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation."
"The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty."
"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him."
"Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them."