In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness – inspissated gloom.
Nobody has the right to put another under such a difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth or hurt himself by telling what is not true.
Our supple tribes repress their patriot throats, And ask no questions but the price of votes.
It is easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or censure the common practices of mankind.
It is a hopeless endeavour to unite the contrarieties of spring and winter; it is unjust to claim the privileges of age, and retain the play-things of childhood.
To me – the choice of life is become less important; I hope hereafter to think only on the choice of eternity.
Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection.
Credulity is the common failing of inexperienced virtue; and he who is spontaneously suspicious may justly be charged with radical corruption.
The difference between coarse and refined abuse is the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow.
We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude, but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor.
Don’t tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.
Friendship, peculiar boon of Heaven, The noble mind’s delight and pride, To men and angels only given, To all the lower world denied.
Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.
Diligence in employments of less consequence is the most successful introduction to greater enterprises.
The imitator treads a beaten walk, and with all his diligence can only find a few flowers or branches untouched by his predecessor, the refuse of contempt, or the omissions of negligence.
When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly.
A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves; neither vanity not conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it.
A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity.
All envy is proportionate to desire.
I wish there were some cure, like the lover’s leap, for all heads of which some single idea has obtained an unreasonable and irregular possession.