Precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity as to those mysterious powers assumed by others.
An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.
When we feel a strong desire to thrust our advice upon others, it is usually because we suspect their weakness; but we ought rather to suspect our own.
When certain persons abuse us, let us ask ourselves what description of characters it is that they admire; we shall often find this a very consolatory question.
Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good.
Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.
If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.
Pedantry crams our heads with learned lumber and takes out our brains to make room for it.
Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.
There are male as well as female gossips.
This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another.
When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.
Women generally consider consequences in love, seldom in resentment.
For what are the triumphs of war, planned by ambition, executed by violence, and consummated by devastation? The means are the sacrifice of many, the end, the bloated aggrandizement of the few.
War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.
A youth without fire is followed by an old age without experience.
The young fancy that their follies are mistaken by the old for happiness. The old fancy that their gravity is mistaken by the young for wisdom.
No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought.
It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.
Philosophy is a goddess, whose head indeed is in heaven, but whose feet are upon earth; she attempts more than she accomplishes, and promises more than she performs.