It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequate to the variety of ideas which are conceived by different minds, and which, could they be expressed, would produce a new variety of characteristic differences between man and man.
The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.
Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?
Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their very opposition and desire to destroy each other, are they strengthened and increased.
We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own.
Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.
How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on themselves!
Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.
Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people.
Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?
Wit catches of wit, as fire of fire.
Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.
No man was ever so much deceived by another as by himself.
Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.
Fire and people do in this agree,They both good servants, both ill masters be.
The greatest slave in a kingdom is generally the king of it.
Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.
How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!
There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.
No man ever reaches manhood till a woman's tenderness Is a part of his possession.
We are oftener deceived by being told some truth than no truth.
Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.
There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.
