To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.
The whitewash’d wall, the nicely sanded floor, The varnish’d clock that click’d behind the door; The chest, contriv’d a double debt to pay,- A bed by night, a chest of drawers by day.
Good people all, with one accord, Lament for Madam Blaize, Who never wanted a good word From those who spoke her praise.
A reserved lover, it is said, always makes a suspicious husband.
At this he laughed, and so did we: the jests of the rich are ever successful.
I fretted myself about the mistakes of government, like other people; but finding myself every day grow more angry, and the government growing no better, I left it to mend itself.
Indeed, Constance, you amaze me. Such a girl as you want jewels! It will be time enough for jewels, my dear, twenty years hence, when your beauty begins to want repairs.
I could not but smile to hear her talking in this lofty strain, but I was never much displeased with those harmless delusions that tend to make us more happy.
We are not to judge of the feelings of others by what we might feel if in their place. However dark the habitation of the mole to our eyes, yet the animal itself finds the apartment sufficiently lightsome.
It has been a thousand times observed, and I must observe it once more, that the hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasing than those crowned with fruition.
We are not to judge the feelings of others by what we might feel in their place.
Offences are easily pardoned where there is love at the bottom.
In the end we only regret the chances we didn’t take.
Now, Sir, for my own part, as I naturally hate the face of a tyrant, the farther off he is removed from me, the better pleased am I. The generality of mankind also are of my way of thinking, and have unanimously created one king, whose election at once diminishes the number of tyrants, and puts tyranny at the greatest distance from the greatest number of people.
The country blooms – a garden, and a grave.
There are a hundred faults in this Thing and a hundred things might be said to prove them beauties.
The pain which conscience gives the man who has already done wrong is soon got over. Conscience is a coward; and those faults it has not strength enough to prevent, it seldom has justice enough to accuse.
Now, therefore, I began to associate with none but disappointed authors like myself, who praised, deplored, and despised each other. The satisfaction we found in every celebrated writer’s attempts was inversely as their merits. My unfortunate paradoxes had entirely dried up that source of comfort. I could neither read nor write with satisfaction; for excellence in another was my aversion, and writing was my trade.
Thus the people, who could not bear the very name of king, readily submitted to a magistrate possessed of much greater power; so much do the names of things mislead us, and so little is any form of government irksome to the people, when it coincides with their prejudices.
Premature consolation is but the remembrancer of sorrow.
Thus, my children, after men have travelled through a few stages in vice, shame forsakes them, and returns back to wait upon the few virtues they have still remaining.