There is nothing perhaps so generally consoling to a man as a well-established grievance; a feeling of having been injured, on which his mind can brood from hour to hour, allowing him to plead his own cause in his own court, within his own heart, and always to plead it successfully.
It is easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments. But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be so secure.
When you have done the rashest thing in the world it is very pleasant to be told that no man of spirit could have acted otherwise.
Beware of creating tedium!
When any practice has become the fixed rule of the society in which we live, it is always wise to adhere to that rule, unless it call upon us to do something that is actually wrong. One should not offend the prejudices of the world, even if one is quite sure that they are prejudices.
Never let the estate decrease in your hands. It is only by such resolutions as that that English noblemen and English gentlemen can preserve their country. I cannot bear to see property changing hands.
But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master ofhis limbs in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women.
No living orator would convince a grocer that coffee should be sold without chicory; and no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client.
I think I owe my life to cork soles.
On board ship there are many sources of joy of which the land knows nothing. You may flirt and dance at sixty; and if you are awkward in the turn of a valse, you may put it down to the motion of the ship. You need wear no gloves, and may drink your soda-and-brandy without being ashamed of it.
A man can’t do what he likes with his coverts.
Short accounts make long friends.
Here in England the welfare of the State depends on the conduct of our aristocracy.
I do not think myself to be a worm, and a grub, grass of the field fit only to be burned, a clod, a morsel of putrid atoms that should be thrown to the dungheap, ready for the nethermost pit. Nor if I did should I therefore expect to sit with Angels and Archangels.
There are some points on which no man can be contented to follow the advice of another – some subjects on which a man can consult his own conscience only.
I doubt whether I ever read any description of scenery which gave me an idea of the place described.
Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else, will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.
The greatest mistake any man ever made is to suppose that the good things of the world are not worth the winning.
It is very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing.
It is hard to conceive that the old, whose thoughts have been all thought out, should ever love to live alone. Solitude is surely for the young, who have time before them for the execution of schemes, and who can, therefore, take delight in thinking.