One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.
To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.
In what we really understand, we reason but little.
The measure of any man’s virtue is what he would do, if he had neither the laws nor public opinion, nor even his own prejudices, to control him.
Books are a world in themselves, it is true; but they are not the only world. The world itself is a volume larger than all the libraries in it.
Men are in numberless instances qualified for certain things, for no other reason than because they are qualified for nothing else.
The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end.
Those who have the largest hearts have the soundest understandings; and they are the truest philosophers who can forget themselves.
Those only deserve a monument who do not need one.
He who would see old Hoghton right Must view it by the pale moonlight.
One of the pleasantest things in the world is going on a journey; but I like to go by myself.
He who draws upon his own resources easily comes to an end of his wealth.
It is better to desire than to enjoy, to love than to be loved.
We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.
The confined air of a metropolis is hurtful to the minds and bodies of those who have never lived out of it. It is impure, stagnant – without breathing-space to allow a larger view of ourselves or others – and gives birth to a puny, sickly, unwholesome, and degenerate race of beings.
Our contempt for others proves nothing but the illiberality and narrowness of our own views.
While we desire, we do not enjoy; and with enjoyment desire ceases.
An honest man is respected by all parties.
Man is an intellectual animal, and therefore an everlasting contradiction to himself. His senses centre in himself, his ideas reach to the ends of the universe; so that he is torn in pieces between the two, without a possibility of its ever being otherwise.