Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it.
Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
True modesty and true pride are much the same thing: both consist in setting a just value on ourselves - neither more nor less.
Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love.
That which anyone has been long learning unwillingly, he unlearns with proportional eagerness and haste.
Society is a more level surface than we imagine. Wise men or absolute fools are hard to be met with, as there are few giants or dwarfs. The heaviest charge we can bring against the general texture of society is that it is commonplace. Our fancied superiority to others is in some one thing which we think most of because we excel in it, or have paid most attention to it; whilst we overlook their superiority to us in something else which they set equal and exclusive store by.
Reflection makes men cowards.
Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves will seek to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are "in favor with, their stars," and have a thorough relish of the good things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the muses. Sedentary, nervous, hypochondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, for want of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out for a more airy food and speculative comforts.
Diffidence and awkwardness are antidotes to love.
When we forget old friends, it is a sign we have forgotten ourselves.
To display the greatest powers, unless they are applied to great purposes, makes nothing for the character of greatness.
The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.
Happy are they who live in the dream of their own existence, and see all things in the light of their own minds; who walk by faith and hope; to whom the guiding star of their youth still shines from afar, and into whom the spirit of the world has not entered! They have not been "hurt by the archers", nor has the iron entered their souls. The world has no hand on them.
Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
In exploring new and doubtful tracts of speculation, the mind strikes out true and original views; as a drop of water hesitates at first what direction it will take, but afterwards follows its own course.
One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
Vulgar prejudices are those which arise out of accident, ignorance, or authority; natural prejudices are those which arise out of the constitution of the human mind itself.
Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.
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.
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
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