Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Perhaps man is the only being that can properly be called idle.
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.
The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain.
Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.
A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.
Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.
One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.
There mark what ills the scholar’s life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.
The highest panegyric, therefore, that private virtue can receive, is the praise of servants.
The mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principle subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied.
Virtue is too often merely local.
That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.
As a man advances in life he gets what is better than admiration -judgement to estimate things at their own value.
Attack is the reaction. I never think I have hit hard unless it rebounds.
A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician.