Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.
The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species.
One may know a man that never conversed in the world, by his excess of good-breeding.
We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.
We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.
On you, my lord, with anxious fear I wait, and from your judgment must expect my fate.
Plutarch says very finely that a man should not allow himself to hate even his enemies.
There is nothing touches our imagination so much as a beautiful woman in a plain dress.
Complaisance renders a superior amiable, an equal agreeable, and an inferior acceptable.
Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.
All well-regulated families set apart an hour every morning for tea and bread and butter
This not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.
Physic, for the most part, is nothing else but the substitute of exercise and temperance.
E'en the rough rocks with tender myrtle bloom, and trodden weeds send out a rich perfume.
What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.
From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.
Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
Faith is kept alive in us, and gathers strength, more from practice than from speculations.
Honor's a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.
If our zeal were true and genuine we should be much more angry with a sinner than a heretic.
Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is always, therefore, represented as blind.
They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.
To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.
I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.
A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.
The head has the most beautiful appearance, as well as the highest station, in a human figure.
There is nobody so weak of invention that cannot make some little stories to villify his enemy.
Devotion, when it does not lie under the check of reason, is apt to degenerate into enthusiasm.
T is liberty crowns Britannia's Isle, And makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile.
Great Pompey's shade complains that we are slow, And Scipio's ghost walks unavenged amongst us!
It is not the business of virtue to extirpate the affections of the mind, but to regulate them.
Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
We are always doing something for posterity, but I would fain see posterity do something for us.
Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter.
True modesty avoids everything that is criminal; false modesty everything that is unfashionable.
Heaven is not to be looked upon only as the reward, but the natural effect, of a religious life.
In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.
Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it.
With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.
No one is more cherished in this world than someone who lightens the burden of another. Thank you.
What can that man fear who takes care to please a Being that is able to crush all his adversaries?
There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.
Temperance gives nature her full play, and enables her to exert herself in all her force and vigor.
A religious hope does not only bear up the mind under her sufferings but makes her rejoice in them.