While I am to crawl upon this Planet, I would willingly enjoy the health at least of an insect.
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That ready wit, which you so partially allow me, ... may create many admirers; but, take my word for it, it makes few friends. It shines and dazzles like the noonday sun, but, like that, too, it is very apt to scorch, and therefore is always feared. The milder morning and evening light and heat of that planet soothe and calm our minds. Never seek for wit; if it present itself, well and good; but even then, let your judgement interpose, and take care that it be not at the expense of anybody.
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Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutel...
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I could heartily wish that you may often be seen to smile, but never heard to laugh while you live. Frequent and loud laughter is the characte...
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Remember that the wit, humour, and jokes of most mixed companies are local. They thrive in that particular soil, but will not often bear trans...
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Learning is acquired by reading books but the much more necessary learning, the knowledge of the world, is only to be acquired by reading man, and studying all the various editions of them.
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I am not of the opinion generally entertained in this country [England], that man lives by Greek and Latin alone; that is, by knowing a great ...
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Gold and silver are but merchandise, as well as cloth or linen; and that nation that buys the least, and sells the most, must always have the ...
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He had a gentleman-like frankness in his behaviour, and as a great point of honour as a minister can have, especially a minister at the head o...
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The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application ...
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An honest man may really love a pretty girl, but only an idiot marries her merely because she is pretty.
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All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.
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All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have all the plagues...
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There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner...
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Merit at Courts, without favour, will do little or nothing; favour, without merit, will do a good deal; but favour and merit together will do ...
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A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great p...
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If a marriage is going to work well, it must be on a solid footing, namely money, and of that commodity it is the girl with the smallest dowry...
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I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservati...
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Thirty years ago I said, 'But how can one be sick?' But now I say, 'If only one could find the secret of not being sick, I would not exchange ...
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Absolute power can only be supported by error, ignorance and prejudice.
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Armies, though always the supporters and tools of absolute power for the time being, are always the destroyers of it too; by frequently changi...
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Most maxim-mongers have preferred the prettiness to the justness of a thought, and the turn to the truth but I have refused myself to everything that my own experience did not justify and confirm.
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Be wiser than other people if you can but do not tell them so.
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He was as jealous of his power as an impotent lover of his mistress, without activity of mind enough to enjoy or exert it, but could not bear ...
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A man's penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments.
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Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.
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The more one works, the more willing one is to work.
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A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
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In matters of religion and matrimony I never give any advice because I will not have anybody's torments in this world or the next laid to my charge.
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Nature has hardly formed a woman ugly enough to be insensible to flattery upon her person; if her face is so shocking that she must in some degree be conscious of it, her figure and her air, she trusts, make ample amends for it.
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