“Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.”
“Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till he becomes invisible.”
“The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger; the first is a perpetual call upon them to propagate their kind, the latter to preserve themselves.”
“Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!”
“Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn.”
“Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding-places in a voluminous writer.”
“Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.”
“A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us.”
“Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.”
“Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.”
“Irregularity and want of method are only supportable in men of great learning or genius, who are often too full to be exact, and therefore they choose to throw down their pearls in heaps before the reader, rather than be at the pains of stringing them.”
“See in what peace a Christian can die.”
“Eternity! thou pleasing, dreadful thought.”
“Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.”
“Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.”
“As vivacity is the gift of women, gravity is that of men.”
“Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.”
“Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
“Our friends don't see our faults, or conceal them, or soften them.”
“Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.”
“Young people soon give, and forget insults, but old age is slow in both.”
“There is nothing that makes its way more directly to the soul than beauty.”
“Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another.”
“The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.”
“Cheerfulness is the best promoter of health and is as friendly to the mind as to the body.”
“One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.”
“Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.”
“The disease of jealously is so malignant that is converts all it takes into its own nourishment.”
“A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.”
“Friendships, in general, are suddenly contracted; and therefore it is no wonder they are easily dissolved.”