There are a set of religious, or rather moral writers, who teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery, in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.
How often, when I have told you that all men are false and perjury alike, and grow tired of us as soon as ever they have had their wicked wills of us, how often have you sworn you would never forsake me?
To see a Woman you love in Distress; to be unable to relieve her, and at the same Time to reflect that you have brought her into this Situation, is, perhaps, a Curse of which no Imagination can represent the Horrors to those who have not felt it.
In Truth, none seem to have any Title to assert Human Nature to be necessarily and universally evil, but those whose own Minds afford them one Instance of this natural Depravity.
Such indeed was her image, that neither could Shakespeare describe, nor Hogarth paint, nor Clive act, a fury in higher perfection.
To say the truth, every physician, almost, hath his favourite disease, to which he ascribes all the victories obtained over human nature.
Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.
Make money your god, and it will plague you like the devil.
Scarcely one person in a thousand is capable of tasting the happiness of others.
Most men like in women what is most opposite their own characters.
All nature wears one universal grin.
There is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that alma mater, at whose plentiful breast all mankind are nourished.
When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.
LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.
For I hope my Friends will pardon me, when I declare, I know none of them without a Fault; and I should be sorry if I could imagine, I had any Friend who could not see mine. Forgiveness, of this Kind, we give and demand in Turn.
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
Let no man be sorry he has done good, because others have done evil.
A lottery is a taxation on all of the fools in creation.
Riches without charity are nothing worth. They are a blessing only to him who makes them a blessing to others.