Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In my mind, there is nothing so illiberal, and so ill-bred, as audible laughter.
Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.
Knowledge of the world in only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.
Statesmen and beauties are very rarely sensible of the gradations of their decay.
Wrongs are often forgiven; but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it forever.
The rich are always advising the poor, but the poor seldom return the compliment.
If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
A man's own good breeding is the best security against other people's ill manners.
Either a good or a bad reputation outruns and gets before people wherever they go.
Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
A judicious reticence is hard to learn, but it is one of the great lessons of life.
You must embrace the man you hate, if you cannot be justified in knocking him down.
Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.
A joker is near akin to a buffoon; and neither of them is the least related to wit.
Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.
Any affectation whatsoever in dress implies, in my mind, a flaw in the understanding.
People will no more advance their civility to a bear, than their money to a bankrupt.
Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.
I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.
Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.
The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves.
The possibility of remedying imprudent actions is commonly an inducement to commit them.
Every man becomes, to a certain degree, what the people he generally converses with are.
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
Swift speedy time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow.
Lord Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known.
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.
Artichoke: That vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner.
He adorned whatever subject he either spoke or wrote upon, by the most splendid eloquence.
Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person.
Wear your knowledge like your watch - in you pocket - and don't pull it out just for show.
The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.
Speak the language of the company you are in; speak it purely, and unlarded with any other.
Pocket all your knowledge with your watch, and never pull it out in company unless desired.
In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it - thou art a fool.
Love has been not unaptly compared to the small-pox, which most people have sooner or later.
Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.
Let them show me a cottage where there are not the same vices of which they accuse the courts.
Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.
An able man shows his spirit by gentle words and resolute actions. He is neither hot nor timid.
The vulgar only laugh, but never smile; whereas well-bred people often smile, but seldom laugh.
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give luster, and many more people see than weigh.
Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.
In the case of scandal, as in that of robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.
Silence and reserve suggest latent power. What some men think has more effect than what others say.
The greatest powers cannot injure a man's character whose reputation is unblemished among his party.