Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and Grenadiers?
Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.
If death, said my father, reasoning with himself, is nothing but the separation of the soul from the body; – and if it is true that people can walk about and do their business without brains, – then certes the soul does not inhabit there.
Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.
If ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.
Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue; – that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman’s life both glorious and happy.
Precedents are the disgrace of legislation. They are not wanted to justify right measures, are absolutely insufficient to excuse wrong ones. They can only be useful to heralds, dancing masters, and gentlemen ushers.
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
The chaste mind, like a polished plane, may admit foul thoughts, without receiving their tincture.
The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.
Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.
Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
The best friends in the world may differ sometimes.
Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.
Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.
There are worse occupations in this world than feeling a woman’s pulse.
A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath’d at the same time.
Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.