Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.
Knowledge is two-fold, and consists not only in an affirmation of what is true, but in the negation of that which is false.
A hug is worth a thousand words.
In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.
It is astonishing how much more people are interested in lengthening life than improving it.
Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us as those that are not wholly wrong, as no watches so effectively deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.
Fame is an undertaker that pays but little attention to the living, but bedizens the dead, furnishes out their funerals, and follows them to the grave.
It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.
Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them.
Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.
Habit will reconcile us to everything but change.
It is doubtful whether mankind are most indebted to those who like Bacon and Butler dig the gold from the mine of literature, or to those who, like Paley, purify it, stamp it, fix its real value, and give it currency and utility.
Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.
It is a common observation that any fool can get money; but they are not wise that think so.
Envy, if surrounded on all sides by the brightness of another’s prosperity, like the scorpion confined within a circle of fire, will sting itself to death.
It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.
It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.
Genius, in one respect, is like gold; numbers of persons are constantly writing about both, who have neither.
None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.
The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.