I would consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits.
Judgment is forced upon us by experience.
We owe to memory not only the increase of our knowledge, and our progress in rational inquiries, but many other intellectual pleasures.
When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was.
Attainment is followed by neglect, possession by disgust, and the malicious remark of the Greek epigrammatist on marriage may be applied to many another course of life, that its two days of happiness are the first and the last.
Time quickly puts an end to artificial and accidental fame.
Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions.
Reason and truth will prevail at last.
In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.
Confidence is a plant of slow growth; especially in an aged bosom.
I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it.
Every reader should remember the diffidence of Socrates, and repair by his candour the injuries of time: he should impute the seeming defects of his author to some chasm of intelligence, and suppose that the sense which is now weak was once forcible.
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment, and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Language is the dress of thought; and as the noblest mien or most graceful action would be degraded and obscured by a garb appropriated to the gross employments of rusticks or mechanics, so the most heroick sentiments will lose their efficacy.
I should as soon think of contradicting a bishop.
To fix the thoughts by writing, and subject them to frequent examinations and reviews, is the best method of enabling the mind to detect its own sophisms, and keep it on guard against the fallacies which it practices on others.
I respect Millar: he has raised the price of literature.
Justice is indispensably and universally necessary, and what is necessary must always be limited, uniform, and distinct.
A coxcomb is ugly all over with the effectation of a fine gentleman.
From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise.