Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Evil courses can yield pleasure no longer than while thought and reflection can be kept off.
Nothing in human nature is so God-like as the disposition to do good to our fellow-creatures.
That dangerous but too commonly received notion, that a reformed rake makes the best husband.
What the unpenetrating world call Humanity, is often no more than a weak mind pitying itself.
A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.
O! what a Godlike Power is that of doing Good! I envy the Rich and the Great for nothing else!
The companion of an evening, and the companion for life, require very different qualifications.
Romances in general are calculated rather to fire the imagination, than to inform the judgment.
It may be very generous in one person to offer what it would be ungenerous in another to accept.
The plays and sports of children are as salutary to them as labor and work are to grown persons.
People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.
Those who can least bear a jest upon themselves, will be most diverted with one passed on others.
Friendly satire may be compared to a fine lancet, which gently breathes a vein for health's sake.
The first step in achieving prosperity and wealth is learning to appreciate what you already have.
Tho' Beauty is generally the creature of fancy, yet are there some who will be Beauties in every eye.
For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.
There would be no supporting life were we to feel quite as poignantly for others as we do for ourselves.
The World, thinking itself affronted by superior merit, takes delight to bring it down to its own level.
Women are always most observed when they seem themselves least to observe, or to lay out for observation.
Men know no medium: They will either, spaniel-like, fawn at your feet, or be ready to leap into your lap.
Parents cannot expect advice to have the same force upon their children as experience has upon themselves.
A prudent person, having to do with a designing one, will always distrust most when appearances are fairest.
Old men, imagining themselves under obligation to young paramours, seldom keep any thing from their knowledge.
Quantity in diet is more to be regarded than quality. A full meal is a great enemy both to study and industry.
By my soul, I can neither eat, drink, nor sleep; nor, what's still worse, love any woman in the world but her.
I am forced, as I have often said, to try to make myself laugh, that I may not cry: for one or other I must do.
Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.
...for my master, bad as I have thought him, is not half so bad as this woman.-To be sure she must be an atheist!
Let a man do what he will by a single woman, the world is encouragingly apt to think Marriage a sufficient amends.
Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.
All human excellence is but comparative — there are persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
Prejudices in disfavor of a person fix deeper, and are much more difficult to be removed, than prejudices in favor.
The little words in the Republic of Letters, like the little folks in a nation, are the most useful and significant.
From sixteen to twenty, all women, kept in humor by their hopes and by their attractions, appear to be good-natured.
Women are sometimes drawn in to believe against probability by the unwillingness they have to doubt their own merit.
I never knew a man who deserved to be thought well of for his morals who had a slight opinion of our Sex in general.
All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.
Distresses, however heavy at the time, appear light, and even joyous, to the reflecting mind, when worthily overcome.
We have nothing to do, but to choose what is right, to be steady in the pursuit of it, and leave the issue to Providence.
Reverence to a woman in courtship is less to be dispensed with, as, generally, there is but little of it shown afterwards.
A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.
The mind can be but full. It will be as much filled with a small disagreeable occurrence, having no other, as with a large one.
I have my choice: who can wish for more? Free will enables us to do everything well while imposition makes a light burden heavy.
Some children act as if they thought their parents had nothing to do, but to see them established in the world and then quit it.
All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.
As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.
There cannot be any great happiness in the married life except each in turn give up his or her own humors and lesser inclinations.
There hardly can be a greater difference between any two men, than there too often is, between the same man, a lover and a husband.
The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.
There is a pride, a self-love, in human minds that will seldom be kept so low as to make men and women humbler than they ought to be.