He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
They who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it.
They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.
We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.
The necessities of our condition require a thousand offices of tenderness, which mere regard for the species will never dictate.
Faults and defects every work of man must have.
All envy would be extinguished, if it were universally known that there are none to be envied.
Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.
Human happiness has always its abatements; the brightest sunshine of success is not without a cloud.
Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.
The most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs.
The uniform necessities of human nature produce in a great measure uniformity of life, and for part of the day make one place like another; to dress and to undress, to eat and to sleep, are the same in London as in the country.
In misery’s darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour’d his groan, And lonely want retir’d to die.
To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets.
Men are generally idle, and ready to satisfy themselves, and intimidate the industry of others, by calling that impossible which is only difficult.
There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.
Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.
Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.
Books have always a secret influence on the understanding; we cannot at pleasure obliterate ideas; he that reads books of science, thogh without any fixed desire of improvement, will grow more knowing...
Criticism, though dignified from the earliest ages by the labours of men eminent for knowledge and sagacity, has not yet attained the certainty and stability of science.