The life of a scholar seldom abounds with adventure.
Who pepper’d the highest was surest to please.
And fools who came to scoff remain’d to pray.
You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.
I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.
In two opposite opinions, if one be perfectly reasonable, the other can’t be perfectly right.
Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue.
Wit generally succeeds more from being happily addressed than from its native poignancy. A jest, calculated to spread at a gaming-table, may be received with, perfect indifference should it happen to drop in a mackerel-boat.
Every want that stimulates the breast becomes a source of pleasure when redressed.
Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these trifles become at last their most serious concerns.
There is probably no country so barbarous that would not disclose all it knew, if it received equivalent information; and I am apt to think that a person who was ready to give more knowledge than he received would be welcome wherever he came.
Titles and mottoes to books are like escutcheons and dignities in the hands of a king. The wise sometimes condescend to accept of them; but none but a fool would imagine them of any real importance. We ought to depend upon intrinsic merit, and not the slender helps of the title.
Teach erring man to spurn the rage of gain.
To be poor, and to seem poor, is a certain method never to rise.
Every acknowledgment of gratitude is a circumstance of humiliation; and some are found to submit to frequent mortifications of this kind, proclaiming what obligations they owe, merely because they think it in some measure cancels the debt.
True generosity is a duty as indispensably necessary as those imposed upon us by the law. It is a rule imposed upon us by reason, which should be the sovereign law of a rational being.
O friendship! thou fond soother of the human breast, to thee we fly in every calamity; to thee the wretched seek for succor; on thee the care-tired son of misery fondly relies; from thy kind assistance the unfortunate always hopes relief, and may be sure of – disappointment.
Friendship is made up of esteem and pleasure; pity is composed of sorrow and contempt: the mind may for some time fluctuate between them, but it can never entertain both at once.
The folly of others is ever most ridiculous to those who are themselves most foolish.
Fancy restrained may be compared to a fountain, which plays highest by diminishing the aperture.