Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The survivorship of a worthy man in his son is a pleasure scarce inferior to the hopes of the continuance of his own life.
People spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.
Age in a virtuous person, of either sex, carries in it an authority which makes it preferable to all the pleasures of youth.
The world is grown so full of dissimulation and compliment, that men's words are hardly any signification of their thoughts.
There is hardly that person to be found who is not more concerned for the reputation of wit and sense, than honesty and virtue.
There can hardly, I believe, be imagined a more desirable pleasure than that of praise unmixed with any possibility of flattery.
I was going home two hours ago, but was met by Mr. Griffith, who has kept me ever since. . . . I will come within a pint of wine.
Since we cannot promise our selves constant health, let us endeavour at such temper as may be our best support in the decay of it.
Pleasure, when it is a man's chief purpose, disappoints itself; and the constant application to it palls the faculty of enjoying it.
A Woman is naturally more helpless than the other Sex; and a Man of Honour and Sense should have this in his View in all Manner of Commerce with her.
The world will never be in any manner of order or tranquility until men are firmly convinced that conscience, honor and credit are all in one interest
The married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
Though her mien carries much more invitation than command, to behold her is an immediate check to loose behaviour; to love her was a liberal education.
A modest person seldom fails to gain the goodwill of those he converses with, because nobody envies a man who does not appear to be pleased with himself.
It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.
A Daughter: The companion, the friend, and the confidant of her mother, and the object of a pleasure something like the love between the angels to her father.
Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour.
Zeal for the public good is the characteristic of a man of honor and a gentleman, and must take the place of pleasures, profits and all other private gratifications.
Since our persons are not of our own making, when they are such as appear defective or uncomely, it is, methinks, an honest and laudable fortitude to dare to be ugly.
It has been a sort of maxim, that the greatest art is to conceal art; but I know not how, among some people we meet with, their greatest cunning is to appear cunning.
How few there are who are furnished with abilities sufficient to recommend their actions to the admiration of the world, and distinguish themselves from the rest of mankind.
Whenever you commend, add your reasons for doing so; it is this which distinguishes the approbation of a man of sense from the flattery of sycophants and admiration of fools.
Conversation never sits easier upon us than when we now and then discharge ourselves in a symphony of laughter, which may not improperly be called the chorus of conversation.
It is the duty of a great person so to demean himself, as that whatever endowments he may have, he may appear to value himself upon no qualities but such as any man may arrive at.
The man is mechanically turned, and made for getting. . . . It was verily prettily said that we may learn the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it.
Mutual good humor is a dress we ought to appear in wherever we meet, and we should make no mention of what concerns ourselves, without it be of matters wherein our friends ought to rejoice.
The praise of an ignorant man is only good-will, and you should receive his kindness as he is a good neighbor in society, and not as a good judge of your actions in point of fame and reputation.
Violins are the lively, forward, importunate wits, that distinguish themselves by the flourishes of imagination, sharpness of repartee, glances of satire, and bear away the upper part in every consort.
It is a certain sign of an ill heart to be inclined to defamation. They who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification that way; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is laudable in a man's self.
It is a wonderful thing that so many, and they not reckoned absurd, shall entertain those with whom they converse by giving them the history of their pains and aches and imagine such narrations their quota of conversation.
Such is the weakness of our nature, that when men are a little exalted in their condition they immediately conceive they have additional senses, and their capacities enlarged not only above other men, but above human comprehension itself.
It is a secret known but to few, yet of no small use in the conduct of life, that when you fall into a man's conversation, the first thing you should consider is, whether he has a greater inclination to hear you, or that you should hear him.
A man advanced in years that thinks fit to look back on his former life, and calls that only life which was passed with satisfaction and enjoyment, excluding all parts which were not pleasant to him, will find himself very young, if not in infancy.
It may be remarked in general, that the laugh of men of wit is for the most part but a feint, constrained kind of half-laugh, as such persons are never without some diffidence about them; but that of fools is the most honest, natural, open laugh in the world.
Nothing is more silly than the pleasure some people take in "speaking their minds." A man of this make will say a rude thing for the mere pleasure of saying it, when an opposite behavior, full as innocent, might have preserved his friend, or made his fortune.
I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.
Compassion does not only refine and civilize human nature, but has something in it more pleasing and agreeable, than what can be met with in such an indolent happiness, such an indifference to mankind, as that in which the stoics placed their wisdom. As love is the most delightful passion, pity is nothing else but love softened by a degree of sorrow: In short, it is a kind of pleasing anguish, anguish as well as generous sympathy, that knits mankind together, and blends them in the same common lot.