I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.
Hail fellow, well met.
It is a maxim, that those, to whom everybody allows the second place, have an undoubted title to the first.
It is with wits as with razors, which are never so apt to cut those they are employed on as when they have lost their edge.
Men of great parts are often unfortunate in the management of public business, because they are apt to go out of the common road by the quickness of their imagination.
Religion supposed Heaven and Hell, the word of God, and sacraments, and twenty other circumstances which, taken seriously, are a wonderful check to wit and humour.
Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.
Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning-glasses, – to collect the diffused light rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.
Nature has left every man a capacity of being agreeable, though not of shining in company; and there are a hundred men sufficiently qualified for both who, by a very few faults, that they might correct in half an hour, are not so much as tolerable.
I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.
111 company is like a dog, who dirts those most whom he loves best.
The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.
Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.
Observation is an old man’s memory.
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
Happiness is the perpetual possession of being well deceived.
Bachelor’s fare: bread and cheese, and kisses.
In all I wish, how happy should I be, Thou grand Deluder, were it not for thee? So weak thou art that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph’st o’er the wise.
For poetry, he’s past his prime, He takes an hour to find a rhyme; His fire is out, his wit decayed, His fancy sunk, his muse a jade. I’d have him throw away his pen, But there’s no talking to some men.