Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship.
There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
Love of flattery, in most men, proceeds from the mean opinion they have of themselves; in women, from the contrary.
Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitchfork.
Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
She watches him as a cat would watch a mouse.
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.
When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.