As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance.
The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.
If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.
We often regret we did not do otherwise, when that very otherwise would, in all probability, have done for us.
As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.
Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.
The mob is a monster, with the hands of Briareus, but the head of Polyphemus, – strong to execute, but blind to perceive.
That alliance may be said to have a double tie, where the minds are united as well as the body; and the union will have all its strength when both the links are in perfection together.
He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.
Brutes leave ingratitude to man.
Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.
The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.
The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us.
It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
Most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared, from the hive.
Some persons will tell you, with an air of the miraculous, that they recovered although they were given over; whereas they might with more reason have said, they recovered because they were given over.
Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.
If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.
In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here – to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.
The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.