Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.
Lectures were once useful; but now when all can read, and books are so numerous, lectures are unnecessary.
Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.
With what hope can we endeavor to persuade the ladies that the time spent at the toilet is lost in vanity.
Memory is the primary and fundamental power, without which there could be no other intellectual operation.
The great effect of friendship is beneficence, yet by the first act of uncommon kindness it is endangered.
We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.
Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.
Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.
Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.
Network. Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
He who is extravagant will quickly become poor; and poverty will enforce dependence, and invite corruption.
A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.
I know not any crime so great that a man could contrive to commit as poisoning the sources of eternal truth.
Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a grey one.
When a man feel the reprehension of a friend seconded by his own heart, he is easily heated into resentment.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
As the mind must govern the hands, so in every society the man of intelligence must direct the man of labor.
Power is gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
Men have solicitude about fame; and the greater share they have of it, the more afraid they are of losing it.
All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.
Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Friendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness and its permanence from the other.
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
Contempt is a kind of gangrene which, if it seizes one part of a character, corrupts all the rest by degrees.
Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.
To me - the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.
No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves.
No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.
There is in this world no real delight (excepting those of sensuality), but exchange of ideas in conversation.
A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
An author places himself uncalled before the tribunal of criticism and solicits fame at the hazard of disgrace.
It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.
He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.
It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.
To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.
You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.
Milton, Madam, was a genius that could cut a Colossus from a rock; but could not carve heads upon cherry-stones.
In general those parents have the most reverence who most deserve it; for he that lives well cannot be despised.
Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.