Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.
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.
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.
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.
One shining quality lends a lustre to another, or hides some glaring defect.
I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.
We must overact our part in some measure, in order to produce any effect at all.
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.
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 discussing the characters and foibles of common friends is a great sweetness and cement of friendship.
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.
Death is the greatest evil, because it cuts off hope.
The diffusion of taste is not the same thing as the improvement of taste.
Whatever excites the spirit of contradiction is capable of producing the last effects of heroism; which is only the highest pitch of obstinacy, in a good or bad cause, in wisdom or folly.
A man who is determined never to move out of the beaten road cannot lose his way.
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.
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.
We go on a journey to be free of all impediments; to leave ourselves behind much more than to get rid of others
Humour is the describing the ludicrous as it is in itself; wit is the exposing it, by comparing or contrasting it with something else. Humour is, as it were, the growth of nature and accident; wit is the product of art and fancy.
Success in business is seldom owing to uncommon talents or original power which is untractable and self-willed, but to the greatest degree of commonplace capacity.
Truth from the mouth of an honest man and severity from a good-natured man have a double effect.
A gentleman is one who understands and shows every mark of deference to the claims of self-love in others, and exacts it in return from them.
Grace is the absence of everything that indicates pain or difficulty, hesitation or incongruity.
Pride erects a little kingdom of its own, and acts as sovereign in it.
Elegance is something more than ease; it is more than a freedom from awkwardness or restraint. It implies, I conceive, a precision, a polish, a sparkling, spirited yet delicate.
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