Quote collection
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"It is almost always the unhappiness of a victorious disputant to destroy his own authority by claiming too many consequences, or diffusing his proposition to an indefensible extent."
"Differences, we know, are never so effectually laid asleep as by some common calamity; an enemy unites all to whom he threatens danger."
"Avarice is a uniform and tractable vice; other intellectual distempers are different in different constitutions of mind. That which soothes the pride of one will offend the pride of another, but to the favor of the covetous bring money, and nothing is denied."
"In civilized society external advantages make us more respected. A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one. You may analyze this and say, What is there in it? But that will avail you nothing, for it is a part of a general system."
"Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace."
"Ladies, stock and tend your hive, Trifle not at thirty-five; For, howe'er we boast and strive, Life declines from thirty-five; He that ever hopes to thrive Must begin by thirty-five."
"There is nothing against which an old man should be so much upon his guard as putting himself to nurse."
"Vanity is so frequently the apparent motive of advice, that we, for the most part, summon our powers to oppose it without any very accurate inquiry whether it is right."
"Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves."
"Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains."
"Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadsul than its extinction."
"By those who look close to the ground dirt will be seen. I hope I see things from a greater distance."
"The desires of man increase with his acquisitions."
"No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong."
"Governors being accustomed to hear of more crimes than they can punish, and more wrongs than they can redress, set themselves at ease by indiscriminate negligence, and presently forget the request when they lose sight of the petitioner."
"Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate."
"This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive."
"Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice."
"Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused"
"That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem."