Doubt is the vestibule through which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom.
Our admiration of fine writing will always be in proportion to its real difficulty and its apparent ease.
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.
He that has cut the claws of the lion will not feel quite secure until he has also drawn his teeth.
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.