Quote collection
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"Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified."
"Care that is once enter'd into the breast Will have the whole possession ere it rest."
"When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment."
"I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it."
"We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us."
"Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors."
"So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future."
"Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach."
"None are happy but by anticipation of change."
"Health is certainly more valuable than money; because it is by health that money is procured; but thousands and millions are of small avail to alleviate the protracted tortures of the gout, to repair the broken organs of sense, or resuscitate the powers of digestion. Poverty is, indeed, an evil from which we naturally fly, but let us not run from one enemy to another, nor take shelter in the arms of sickness."
"Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?"
"The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes."
"Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a substitute has supplied the place."
"How few of his friends' houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick."
"Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb."
"Complaints are vain; we will try to. do better another time. To-morrow and to-morrow. A few designs and a few failures, and the time of designing is past."
"No evil is insupportable but that which is accompanied with consciousness of wrong."
"Who left nothing of authorship untouched, and touched nothing which he did not adorn. [Lat., Qui nullum fere scribendi genus non tetigit; nullum quod tetigit non ornavit.]"
"We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because for a time they are not remembered; he may, therefore, justly be numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences that may early be impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to occur habitually to the mind."
"The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing."