“I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.”
“Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.”
“Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.”
“A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.”
“This mournful truth is everywhere confessed, slow rises worth by poverty depressed.”
“Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.”
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
“Every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language.”
“When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
“We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.”
“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those who we cannot resemble.”
“The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.”
“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.”
“The drama's laws, the drama's patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.”
“Claret is the liquor for boys; port for men; but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.”
“No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.”
“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”
“Books that you may carry to the fire, and hold readily in your hand, are the most useful after all.”
“Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.”
“A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.”
“Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.”
“Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.”
“It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.”
“There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.”
“A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.”
“Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”
“PATRON — One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is repaid in flattery.”
“It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.”
“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
“There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.”