Habit is, to weak minds, a species of moral predestination, from which they have no power to escape.
Artificial manners vanish the moment the natural passions are touched.
How success changes the opinion of men!
When one illusion vanishes, another shall appear, and, still leading me forward towards an horizon that retreats as I advance, the happy prospect of futurity shall vanish only with my existence.
Nor elves, nor fays, nor magic charm, Have pow’r, or will, to work us harm; For those who dare the truth to tell, Fays, elves, and fairies, wish them well.
The unaffected language of real feeling and benevolence is easily understood, and is never ridiculous.
Our pleasures in literature do not, I think, decline with age; last 1st of January was my eighty-second birthday, and I think that I had as much enjoyment from books as I ever had in my life.
Nature’s hasty conscience.
There are two sorts of content; one is connected with exertion, the other with habits of indolence. The first is a virtue; the other, a vice.
Beauty is a great gift of heaven; not for the purpose of female vanity, but a great gift for one who loves, and wishes to be beloved.
According to the Asiatics, Cupid’s bow is strung with bees which are apt to sting, sometimes fatally, those who meddle with it.
Beauties are always curious about beauties, and wits about wits.
Confidence is the best proof of love.
Sir Patrick Rackrent lived and died a monument of old Irish hospitality.
Man is to be held only by the slightest chains; with the idea that he can break them at pleasure, he submits to them in sport.
Young ladies who think of nothing but dress, public amusements, and forming what they call high connexions, are undoubtedly most easily managed, by the fear of what the world will say of them.
Idleness, ennui, noise, mischief, riot, and a nameless train of mistaken notions of pleasure, are often classed, in a young man’s mind, under the general head of liberty.
We may make our future by the best use of the present. There is no moment like the present.
First loves are not necessarily more foolish than others; but the chances are certainly against them. Proximity of time or place, a variety of accidental circumstances more than the essential merits of the object, often produce what is called first love.
Justice satisfies everybody.
Hope can produce the finest and most permanent springs of action.