When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.
The talent of turning men into ridicule, and exposing to laughter those one converses with, is the qualification of little ungenerous tempers.
There is not in earth a spectacle more worthy than a great man superior to his sufferings.
A state of temperance, sobriety and justice without devotion is a cold, lifeless, insipid condition of virtue, and is rather to be styled philosophy than religion.
The statue lies hid in a block of marble; and the art of the statuary only clears away the superfluous matter, and removes the rubbish.
Hope calculates its scenes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; and grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin and dishonor.
I always rejoice when I see a tribunal filled with a man of an upright and inflexible temper, who in the execution of his country.
Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.
Eternity! thou pleasing dreadful thought! Through what variety of untried being, Through what new scenes and changes must we pass!
Were not this desire of fame very strong, the difficulty of obtaining it, and the danger of losing it when obtained, would be sufficient to deter a man from so vain a pursuit.
An idol may be undeified by many accidental causes. Marriage, in particular, is a kind of counter apotheosis, as a deification inverted. When a man becomes familiar with his goddess she quickly sinks into a woman.
Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
Should a writer single out and point his raillery at particular persons, or satirize the miserable, he might be sure of pleasing a great part of his readers, but must be a very ill man if he could please himself.
Simonides, a poet famous in his generation, is, I think, author of the oldest satire that is now extant, and, as some say, of the first that was ever written.
A thousand trills and quivering sounds In airy circles o’er us fly, Till, wafted by a gentle breeze, They faint and languish by degrees, And at a distance die.
I have but nine-pence in ready money, but I can draw for a thousand pounds.
Why, a spirit is such a little, little thing, that I have heard man, who was a great scholar, say that he’ll dance ye a hornpipe upon the point of a needle.
Instability of temper ought to be checked when it disposes men to wander from one scheme to another: since such a fickleness cannot but be attended with fatal consequences.
Amidst the soft variety I’m lost.
Guard thy heart on this weak side, where most our nature fails.