Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
This open resistance to [Parliament's] authority can only have found place among the lower and more ignorant of the people.
True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings.
I assisted at the birth of that most significant word "flirtation," which dropped from the most beautiful mouth in the world.
Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.
Women have, in general, but ne object, which is their beauty; upon which, scarce any flattery is too gross for them to swallow.
We are in truth, more than half what we are by imitation. The great point is to choose good models and to study them with care.
Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age
A young fellow ought to be wiser than he should seem to be; and an old fellow ought to seem wise whether he really be so or not.
The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.
If you recognize anyone, it does not mean that you like him.We all, for instance, recognize the honourable Member for Ebbw Vale.
The world is a country which nobody ever yet knew by description; one must travel through it one's self to be acquainted with it.
May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!
No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.
If you can once engage people's pride, love, pity, ambition on your side, you need not fear what their reason can do against you.
Let it be your maxim through life, to know all you can know, yourself; and never to trust implicitly to the information of others.
An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.
It was like a life-line to a sinking man. It seemed to bring hope where there was none. The generosity of it was beyond our belief.
It is often more necessary to conceal contempt than resentment; the former is never forgiven, but the later is sometimes forgotten.
Awkwardness is a more real disadvantage than it is generally thought to be; it often occasions ridicule, it always lessens dignity.
The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter, as more people have ears to be tickled than understandings to judge.
The talent of insinuation is more useful than that of persuasion, as everybody is open to insinuation, but scarce any to persuasion.
Were cricket and football abolished, it would bring upon the masses nothing but misery, depression, sloth, indiscipline and disorder.
Observe any meetings of people, and you will always find their eagerness and impetuosity rise or fall in proportion to their numbers.
Whenever I go to an opera, I leave my sense and reason at the door with my half-guinea, and deliver myself up to my eyes and my ears.
Sexual intercourse is a grossly overrated pastime; the position is undignified, the pleasure momentary and the consequences damnable.
A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.
Most people have ears, but few have judgment; tickle those ears, and depend upon it, you will catch their judgments, such as they are.
A gentleman has ease without familiarity, is respectful without meanness; genteel without affectation, insinuating without seeming art.
When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.
The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.
Of the whole sum of human life no small part is that which consists of a man's relations to his country, and his feelings concerning it.
Arbitrary power has seldom... been introduced in any country at once. It must be introduced by slow degrees, and as it were step by step.
It is good breeding alone that can prepossess people in your favor at first sight, more time being necessary to discover greater talents.
There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt: and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult.
Smooth your way to the head through the heart. The way of reason is a good one: but it is commonly something longer, and perhapsnot so sure.
I believe it has been said that one copy of The Times contains more useful information than the whole of the historical works of Thucydides.
All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.
Buy good books, and read them; the best books are the commonest, and the last editions are always the best, if the editors are not blockheads.
Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.
Wit is not levelled so much at the muscles as at the heart; and the latter will sometimes smile when there is not a single wrinkle on the cheek.
I hope this view of the question may be a mistaken one, because it does not seem to me very unlikely that the suffrage will be granted to women.
To this principle of vanity, which philosophers call a mean one, and which I do not, I owe a great part of the figure which I have made in life.
Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.
Remember that whatever knowledge you do not solidly lay the foundation of before you are eighteen, you will never be master of while you breathe.
Cobden was the greatest statesman and prophet of the century. His speeches are an inspiration. A man whose disciple I am willing to confess I am.
I would have it inscribed on the curtains of your bed and the walls of your chamber: "If you do not rise early you can make progress in nothing."
Remember, as long as you live, that nothing but strict truth can carry you through the world, with either your conscience or your honor unwounded.
If you will please people, you must please them in their own way; and as you cannot make them what they should be, you must take them as they are.