Friendship is cemented by interest, vanity, or the want of amusement; it seldom implies esteem, or even mutual regard.
To expect an author to talk as he writes is ridiculous; or even if he did you would find fault with him as a pedant.
Some one is generally sure to be the sufferer by a joke.
Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.
First impressions are often the truest, as we find (not unfrequently) to our cost when we have been wheedled out of them by plausible professions or actions. A man's look is the work of years, it is stamped on his countenance by the events of his whole life, nay, more, by the hand of nature, and it is not to be got rid of easily.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.
Language, if it throws a veil over our ideas, adds a softness and refinement to them, like that which the atmosphere gives to naked objects.
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
By despising all that has preceded us, we teach others to despise ourselves.
The most fluent talkers or most plausible reasoners are not always the justest thinkers.
Almost every sect of Christianity is a perversion of its essence, to accommodate it to the prejudices of the world.
Within my heart is lurking suspicion, and base fear, and shame and hate; but above all, tyrannous love sits throned, crowned with her graces, silent and in tears.
I am not, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, a good-natured man; that is, many things annoy me besides what interferes with my own ease and interest. I hate a lie; a piece of injustice wounds me to the quick, though nothing but the report of it reach me. Therefore I have made many enemies and few friends; for the public know nothing of well-wishers, and keep a wary eye on those who would reform them.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
The public is so in awe of its own opinion that it never dares to form any, but catches up the first idle rumour, lest it should be behindhand in its judgment, and echoes it till it is deafened with the sound of its own voice.
When one can do better than everyone else in the same walk, one does not make any very painful exertions to outdo oneself. The progress of improvement ceases nearly at the point where competition ends.
One said he wondered that leather was not dearer than any other thing. Being demanded a reason: because, saith he, it is more stood upon than any other thing in the world.
The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.
The discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
Those who have had none of the cares of this life to harass and disturb them, have been obliged to have recourse to the hopes and fears of the next to vary the prospect before them.
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
Painters... are the most lively observers of what passes in the world about them, and the closest observers of what passes in their own minds.
We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others
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