A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.
Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.
Honor’s a fine imaginary notion, that draws in raw and unexperienced men to real mischiefs.
We find that Good and Evil happen alike to all Men on this Side of the Grave; and as the principle Design of Tragedy is to raise Commiseration and Terror in the Minds of the Audience, we shall defeat this great End, if we always make Virtue and Innocence happy and successful.
The English Writers of Tragedy are possessed with a Notion, that when they represent a virtuous or innocent Person in Distress, they ought not to leave him till they have delivered him out of his Troubles, or made him triumph over his Enemies.
Marriage enlarges the Scene of our Happiness and Miseries.
Good Nature, and Evenness of Temper, will give you an easie Companion for Life; Vertue and good Sense, an agreeable Friend; Love and Constancy, a good Wife or Husband. Where we meet one Person with all these Accomplishments, we find an Hundred without any one of them.
I shall endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality, that my Readers may, if possible, both Ways findtheir Account in the Speculation of the Day.
Women were formed to temper Mankind, and sooth them into Tenderness and Compassion; not to set an Edge upon their Minds, and blowup in them those Passions which are too apt to rise of their own Accord.
There is more of turn than of truth in a saying of Seneca, “That drunkenness does not produce but discover faults.” Common experience teaches the contrary. Wine throws a man out of himself, and infuses dualities into the mind which she is a stranger to in her sober moments.
Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?
A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.
Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in.
True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.
Riches are apt to betray a man into arrogance.
Riches expose a man to pride and luxury, and a foolish elation of heart.
If ridicule were employed to laugh men out of vice and folly, it might be of some use.
It is impossible for authors to discover beauties in one another’s works; they have eyes only for spots and blemishes.
The religious man fears, the man of honor scorns, to do an ill action.
It is observed by Cicero, that men of the greatest and most shining parts are most actuated by ambition.