It is easier taking the beaten path than making our way over bogs and precipices. The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
Persons of slender intellectual stamina dread competition, as dwarfs are afraid of being run over in the street.
Learning is the knowledge of that which none but the learned know.
Those who are fond of setting things to rights, have no great objection to seeing them wrong.
Spleen can subsist on any kind of food.
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols -- it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
What are the publications that succeed? Those that pretend to teach the public that the persons they have been accustomed unwittingly to look up to as the lights of the earth are no better than themselves.
In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.
The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.
I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.
To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
Danger is a good teacher, and makes apt scholars. So are disgrace, defeat, exposure to immediate scorn and laughter. There is no opportunity in such cases for self-delusion, no idling time away, no being off your guard (or you must take the consequences) - neither is there any room for humour or caprice or prejudice.
It is essential to the triumph of reform that it should never succeed.
A great chessplayer is not a great man, for he leaves the world as he found it.
The incentive to ambition is the love of power.
Many a man would have turned rogue if he knew how.
The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.
By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.
The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.
The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.
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.
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
The imagination is of so delicate a texture that even words wound it.
We can bear to be deprived of everything but our self-conceit.
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.
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