A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately after his wife died; it was the triumph of hope over experience.
Wine gives great pleasure, and every pleasure is of itself a good. and A man should cultivate his mind so as to have that confidence and readiness without wine, which wine gives.
Whisky making is the art of making poison pleasant.
Nobody can be taught faster than he can learn.
We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.
True enjoyments also keep people from vice.
Quack: A boastful pretender to arts which he does not understand. A vain boastful pretender to physick; An artful, tricking practitioner in physick.
A man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.
A transition from an author’s book to his conversation, is too often like an entrance into a large city.
Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.
Excise: A hateful tax levied upon commodities, and adjudged not by the common judges of property, but wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid.
Expectation improperly indulged in must end in disappointment.
Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.
If useless thoughts could be expelled from the mind, all the valuable parts of our knowledge would more frequently recur.
Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.
It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.
Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
Merit rather enforces respect than attracts fondness.
Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.
Quotation is a good thing, there is a community of thought in it.