Quote collection
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"Among the many inconsistencies which folly produces or infirmity suffers in the human mind, there has often been observed a manifest and striking contrariety between the life of an author and his writings... Those whom the appearance of virtue or the evidence of genius has tempted to a nearer knowledge of the writer, in whose performances they may be found, have indeed had frequent reason to repent their curiosity."
"Genius now and then produces a lucky trifle. We still read the Dove of Anacreon, and Sparrow of Catullus; and a writer naturally pleases himself with a performance which owes nothing to the subject."
"Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation."
"Never mind the use--do it!"
"Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection."
"For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws."
"Games are good or bad as to their nature; all may be perverted."
"Gaiety is to good-humor as animal perfumes to vegetable fragrance. The one overpowers weak spirits, the other recreates and revives them. Gaiety seldom fails to give some pain; good-humor boasts no faculties which every one does not believe in his own power, and pleases principally by not offending."
"They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present."
"Of him that hopes to be forgiven it is indispensably required that he forgive. It is, therefore, superfluous to urge any other motive. On this great duty eternity is suspended, and to him that refuses to practise it, the throne of mercy is inaccessible, and the Saviour of the world has been born in vain."
"Such is the constitution of Man that labor may be said to be its own re-ward."
"No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation."
"As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it."
"Providence has fixed the limits of human enjoyment by immovable boundaries, and has set different gratifications at such a distance from each other, that no art or power can bring them together. This great law it is the business of every rational being to understand, that life may not pass away in an attempt to make contradictions consistent, to combine opposite qualities, and to unite things which the nature of their being must always keep asunder."
"A married man has many cares, but a bachelor no pleasures."
"Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved."
"Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive."
"Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life."
"Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals."
"Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume."