Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If politicians would think more they would act less.
No man is so insignificant as to be sure his example can do no hurt.
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen.
The best party is but a kind of conspiracy against the rest of the nation.
Being wise doth either make men our friends or discourage them from being our enemies.
If the laws could speak for themselves, they would complain of the lawyers in the first place.
To the question, What shall we do to be saved in this World? there is no other answer but this, Look to your Moat.
If we did not take great pains, and were not at great expense to corrupt our nature, our nature would never corrupt us.
The laboring man and the artificer knows what every hour of his time is worth, and parts not with it but for the full value.
Dissimulation was his masterpiece; in which he so much excelled that men were not ashamed of being deceived but twice by him.
The sense of ultimate truth is the intellectual counterpart of the esthetic sense of perfect beauty, or the moral sense of perfect good.
Counsel and conversation is a good second education, that improves all the virtue and corrects all the vice of the former, and of nature itself.
Friendship hath the skill and observation of the best physician, the diligence and vigilance of the best nurse, and the tenderness and patience of the best mother.
That men should kill one another for want of somewhat else to do, which is the case of all volunteers in war, seems to be so horrible to humanity that there needs no divinity to control it.
Angry and choleric men are as ungrateful and unsociable as thunder and lightning, being in themselves all storm and tempest; but quiet and easy natures are like fair weather, welcome to all.
The lower sort of men must be indulged the consolation of finding fault with those above them; without that, they would be so melancholy that it would be dangerous, considering their numbers.
Envy is a weed that grows in all soils and climates, and is no less luxuriant in the country than in the court; is not confined to any rank of men or extent of fortune, but rages in the breasts of all degrees.
If our credit be so well built, so firm, that it is not easy to be shaken by calumny or insinuation, envy then commends us, and extols us beyond reason to those upon whom we depend, till they grow jealous, and so blow us up when they cannot throw us down.
It was a very proper answer to him who asked why any map should be delighted with beauty, that it was a question that none but a blind man could ask; since any beautiful object doth so much attract the sight of all men, that it is in no man's power not to be pleased with it.
Anger is an affected madness, compounded of pride and folly, and an intention to do commonly more mischief than it can bring to pass; and, without doubt, of all passions which actually disturb the mind of man, it is most in our power to extinguish, at least, to suppress and correct, our anger.
There is no art or science that is too difficult for industry to attain to; it is the gift of tongues, and makes a man understood and valued in all countries, and by all nations; it is the philosopher's stone, that turns all metals, and even stones, into gold, and suffers not want to break into its dwelling; it is the northwest passage, that brings the merchant's ships as soon to him as he can desire: in a word, it conquers all enemies, and makes fortune itself pay contribution.