Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All that a husband or wife really wants is to be pitied a little, praised a little, and appreciated a little.
Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves.
The genteel thing is the genteel thing any time, if as be that a gentleman bees in a concatenation accordingly.
Turn, gentle Hermit of the Dale, And guide my lonely way To where yon taper cheers the vale With hospitable ray.
Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.
I have known a German Prince with more titles than subjects, and a Spanish nobleman with more names than shirts.
One should not quarrel with a dog without a reason sufficient to vindicate one through all the courts of morality.
In a polite age almost every person becomes a reader, and receives more instruction from the Press than the Pulpit.
Philosophy ... should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of.
A kind and gentle heart he had, To comfort friends and foes; The naked every day he clad When he put on his clothes.
Thus let me hold thee to my heart, And every care resign: And we shall never, never part, My life-my all that's mine!
To the last moment of his breath, On hope the wretch relies; And even the pang preceding death Bids expectation rise.
The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.
Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.
Conscience is a coward, and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
I find you want me to furnish you with argument and intellects too. No, sir, these, I protest you, are too hard for me.
Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.
There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.
The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.
As few subjects are more interesting to society, so few have been more frequently written upon than the education of youth.
Hope, like the gleaming taper's light, Adorns and cheers our way; And still, as darker grows the night, Emits a brighter ray.
If the soul be happily disposed, every thing becomes capable of affording entertainment, and distress will almost want a name.
Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.
Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.
The wretch condemn'd with life to part, Still, still on hope relies; And every pang that rends the heart Bids expectation rise.
While Resignation gently slopes away, And all his prospects brightening to the last, His heaven commences ere the world be past.
Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.
Embosom'd in the deep where Holland lies. Methinks her patient sons before me stand, Where the broad ocean leans against the land.
It has been well observed that few are better qualified to give others advice than those who have taken the least of it themselves.
Alas! the joys that fortune brings Are trifling, and decay, And those who prize the trifling things, More trifling still than they.
And what is friendship but a name, A charm that lulls to sleep, A shade that follows wealth or fame, And leaves the wretch to weep?
I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.
Aromatic plants bestow no spicy fragrance while they grow; but crush'd or trodden to the ground, diffuse their balmy sweets around.
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
You will always find that those are most apt to boast of national merit, who have little or not merit of their own to depend on . . .
Ridicule has even been the most powerful enemy of enthusiasm, and properly the only antagonist that can be opposed to it with success.
Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.
Absence, like death, sets a seal on the image of those we love: we cannot realize the intervening changes which time may have effected.
I have found by experience that they who have spent all their lives in cities contract not only an effeminacy of habit, but of thinking.
I have seen her and sister cry over a book for an hour together, and they said, they liked the book the better the more it made them cry.
One writer, for instance, excels at a plan or a title page, another works away at the body of the book, and a third is a dab at an index.
True genius walks along a line, and, perhaps, our greatest pleasure is in seeing it so often near falling, without being ever actually down.
To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?
Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.
Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
When we take a slight survey of the surface of our globe a thousand objects offer themselves which, though long known, yet still demand our curiosity.
We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.
Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog And in that town a dog was found, As many dogs there be, Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound, And curs of low degree.
A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.