This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.
Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.
I know that I have had friends who would never have vexed or betrayed me, if they had walked on all fours.
Foolish writers and readers are created for each other.
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel – a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.
Cunning is neither the consequence of sense, nor does it give sense. A proof that it is not sense, is that cunning people never imagine that others can see through them. It is the consequence of weakness.
The sure way of judging whether our first thoughts are judicious, is to sleep on them. If they appear of the same force the next morning as they did over night, and if good nature ratifies what good sense approves, we may be pretty sure we are in the right.
I sit with my toes in a brook, And if any one axes forwhy? I hits them a rap with my crook, For ’tis sentiment does it, says I.
Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.
One’s mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.
Old friends are the great blessings of one’s later years. Half a word conveys one’s meaning. They have a memory of the same events, have the same mode of thinking. I have young relations that may grow upon me, for my nature is affectionate, but can they grow To Be old friends?
History is a romance that is believed; romance, a history that is not believed.