Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.
There is no being so poor and so contemptible, who does not think there is somebody still poorer, and still more contemptible.
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.
As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.
It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
He that shall peruse the political pamphlets of any past reign will wonder why they were so eagerly read, or so loudly praised.
The great end of prudence is to give cheerfulness to those hours which splendor cannot gild, and acclamation cannot exhilarate.
In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.
A Poet, Naturalist, and Historian, Who left scarcely any style of writing untouched, And touched nothing that he did not adorn.
Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.
Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.
We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.
The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.
Economy is the parent of integrity, of liberty, and of ease, and the beauteous sister of temperance, of cheerfulness and health.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.
Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.
If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage, Till pitying Nature signs the last release, And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Condemned to Hope's delusive mine, As on we toil from day to day, By sudden blasts or slow decline Our social comforts drop away.
Year chases year, decay pursues decay, Still drops some joy from with'ring life away; New forms arise, and diff'rent views engage
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly.
All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance.
It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.
Gayety is to good-humor as perfumes to vegetable fragrance: the one overpowers weak spirits; the other recreates and revives them.
We may have many acquaintances, but we can have but few friends; this made Aristotle say that he that hath many friends hath none.
A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
If the guardian or the mother Tell the woes of willful waste, Scorn their counsel and their pother, You can hang or drown at last.
The lust of gold succeeds the rage of conquest; The lust of gold, unfeeling and remorseless! The last corruption of degenerate man.
Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who while he was chill was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison.
Politeness is fictitious benevolence. Depend upon it, the want of it never fails to produce something disagreeable to one or other.
Of many, imagined blessings it may be doubted whether he that wants or possesses them had more reason to be satisfied with his lot.
In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.
Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
The charm of London is that you are never glad or sorry for ten minutes together; in the country you are one or the other for weeks.
The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.
There are, indeed, few kinds of composition from which an author, however learned or ingenious, can hope a long continuance of fame.
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Shakespeare never had six lines together without a fault. Perhaps you may find seven, but this does not refute my general assertion.
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal; and he may be properly charged with evil who refused to learn how he might prevent it.
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.
A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.
Few faults of style, whether real or imaginary, excite the malignity of a more numerous class of readers, than the use of hard words.