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.
The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
The assumption of merit is easier, less embarrassing, and more effectual than the actual attainment of it.
The same reason makes a man a religious enthusiast that makes a man an enthusiast in any other way ... an uncomfortable mind in an uncomfortable body.
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.
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.
Familiarity confounds all traits of distinction; interest and prejudice take away the power of judging.
No act terminating in itself constitutes greatness.
Comedy naturally wears itself out - destroys the very food on which it lives; and by constantly and successfully exposing the follies and weaknesses of mankind to ridicule, in the end leaves itself nothing worth laughing at.
The chain of habit coils itself around the heart like a serpent, to gnaw and stifle it.
Asleep, nobody is a hypocrite
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
If we use no ceremony towards others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.
Those who have little shall have less, and that those who have much shall take all that others have left.
The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
Mankind are so ready to bestow their admiration on the dead, because the latter do not hear it, or because it gives no pleasure to the objects of it. Even fame is the offspring of envy.
A taste for liberal art is necessary to complete the character of a gentleman, Science alone is hard and mechanical. It exercises the understanding upon things out of ourselves, while it leaves the affections unemployed, or engrossed with our own immediate, narrow interests.
The secret of the difficulties of those people who make a great deal of money, and yet are always in want of it, is this-they throw it away as soon as they get it on the first whim or extravagance that strikes them, and have nothing left to meet ordinary expenses or discharge old debts.
Every man, in his own opinion, forms an exception to the ordinary rules of morality.
We find many things to which the prohibition of them constitutes the only temptation.
You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.
As we are poetical in our natures, so we delight in fable.
Faith is necessary to victory.
Everything is in motion. Everything flows. Everything is vibrating.
The art of pleasing consists in being pleased.
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