“I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.”
“There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten.”
“Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.”
“If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.”
“The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered but a general effect of pleasing impression.”
“Go into the street, and give one man a lecture on morality, and another a shilling, and see which will respect you most.”
“One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.”
“There is nothing so much seduces reason from vigilance as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman in marriage.”
“It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.”
“That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.”
“Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.”
“I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society.”
“Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.”
“There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.”
“What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.”
“You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.”
“The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.”
“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”
“The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.”
“It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.”
“Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.”
“Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.”
“If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.”
“Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.”
“Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.”
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”
“Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.”
“Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.”
“Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.”
“When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.”