Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.
He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.
An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude
With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.
The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.
If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours.
Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
Deformity of the heart I call The worst deformity of all; For what is form, or what is face, But the soul's index, or its case?
Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.
Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are "sermons in stones," in healthy books, and "good in everything.
Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.
As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.
Time is the measurer of all things, but is itself immeasurable, and the grand discloser of all things, but is itself undisclosed.
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.
To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread.
Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.
If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition.
Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.
Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.
Worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them.
Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.
Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.
He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.
Commerce flourishes by circumstances, precarious, transitory, contingent, almost as the winds and waves that bring it to our shores.
Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.
As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.
Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.
When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.
Attempts at reform, when they fail, strengthen despotism, as he that struggles tightens those cords he does not succeed in breaking.
A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.
If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.
Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.
That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.
Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity himself, than straight forward and simple integrity in another.
He that knows himself, knows others; and he that is ignorant of himself, could not write a very profound lecture on other men's heads.
Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.
Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.
The wealth is ultimately just a relative thing. As a person with little money and little more needs to rich guys money but really wishes
None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves.
Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven.
There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.
Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.
The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.
The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.
It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.
We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.
There are some who write, talk, and think, so much about vice and virtue, that they have no time to practice either the one or the other.