If a man has a science to learn he must regularly and resolutely advance.
Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend.
The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.
People have now a-days got a strange opinion that every thing should be taught by lectures. Now, I cannot see that lectures can do as much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken.
Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent.
A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation – a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.
Sir, you have but two topics, yourself and me. I am sick of both.
Smoking is a shocking thing – blowing smoke out of our mouths into other people’s mouths, eyes, and noses, and having the same thing done to us.
Courtesy and good humor are often found with little real worth.
Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.
I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society.
We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giving it.
The perfect day for quitting is not real. It will never come, so might as well start today.
Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.
Art hath an enemy called ignorance.
There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.
Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. He whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of a critic.
Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance.
Genius is that energy which collects, combines, amplifies, and animates.