We may take Fancy for a companion, but must follow Reason as our guide.
Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.
A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.
All censure of a man’s self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.
No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.
Whoever rises above those who once pleased themselves with equality, will have many malevolent gazers at his eminence.
Levellers wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.
In civilized society we all depend upon each other, and our happiness is very much owing to the good opinion of mankind.
Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.
There is a certain degree of temptation which will overcome any virtue. Now, in so far as you approach temptation to a man, you do him an injury; and, if he is overcome, you share his guilt.
Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.
Every man prefers virtue, when there is not some strong incitement to transgress its precepts.
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
By writing, you learn to write.
While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.
Most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend’s wife genteelly: he may cheat at cards genteelly.
In youth, it is common to measure right and wrong by the opinion of the world, and in age, to act without any measure but interest, and to lose shame without substituting virtue.
An exotic and irrational entertainment.