The ill usage of every minute is a new record against us in heaven.
The necessities that exist are in general created by the superfluities that are enjoyed.
Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.
Silence is a trick when it imposes. Pedants and scholars, churchmen and physicians, abound in silent pride.
Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.
There appears to exist a greater desire to live long than to live well! Measure by man's desires, he cannot live long enough; measure by his good deeds, and he has not lived long enough; measure by his evil deeds, and he has lived too long.
Liberal of cruelty are those who pamper with promises; promisers destroy while they deceive, and the hope they raise is dearly purchased by the dependence that is sequent to disappointment.
We never read without profit if with the pen or pencil in our hand we mark such ideas as strike us by their novelty, or correct those we already possess.
Fools with bookish knowledge art children with edged weapons; they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.
Sloth is the torpidity of the mental faculties; the sluggard is a living insensible.
The rich and luxurious may claim an exclusive right to those pleasures which are capable of being purchased by pelf, in which the mind has no enjoyment, and which only afford a temporary relief to languor by steeping the senses in forgetfulness; but in the precious pleasures of the intellect, so easily accessible by all mankind, the great have no exclusive privilege; for such enjoyments are only to be procured by our own industry.
The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.
Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.
The weak may be joked out of anything but their weakness.
Laugh as loud as you please at your companion's wit; do not even smile at his folly.
Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense.
Age is suspicious but is not itself often suspected.
Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.
The quarter of an hour before dinner is the worst that suitors can choose.
One ought to love society, if he wishes to enjoy solitude. It is a social nature that solitude works upon with the most various power. If one is misanthropic, and betakes himself to loneliness that he may get away from hateful things, solitude is a silent emptiness to him.
The love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.
Take care to be an economist in prosperity. There is no fear of your being one in adversity.
The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.
Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.
Unless the habit leads to happiness the best habit is to contract none.
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