There is an unfortunate disposition in a man to attend much more to the faults of his companions which offend him, than to their perfections which please him.
Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.
The world is an excellent judge in general, but a very bad one in particular.
True joy is only hope put out of fear.
Good-humor is allied to generosity, ill-humor to meanness.
We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so. Might not one imagine that superior beings do the same, and for exactly the same reason?
Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.
It is not enough that you can form nay, and follow, the most excellent rules for conducting yourself in the world. You must also know when to deviate from them, and where lies the exception.
What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.
The mind of man is this world's true dimension; and knowledge is the measure of the mind.
A lively and agreeable man has not only the merit of liveliness and agreeableness himself, but that also of awakening them in others.
Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.
Whatever natural right men may have to freedom and independency, it is manifest that some men have a natural ascendency over others.
Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world.
Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.
Out of mind as soon as out of sight.
A very small offence may be a just cause for great resentment: it is often much less the particular instance which is obnoxious to us than the proof it carries with it of the general tenor and disposition of the mind from whence it sprung.
Discernment is a power of the understanding in which few excel. Is not that owing to its connection with impartiality and truth? for are not prejudice and partiality blind?
There is in some men a dispassionate neutrality of mind, which, though it generally passes for good temper, can neither gratify nor warm us: it must indeed be granted that these men can only negatively offend: but then it should also be remembered that they cannot positively please.
I hardly know a sight that raises one's indignation more than that of an enlarged soul joined to a contracted fortune; unless it be that so much more common one, of a contracted soul joined to an enlarged fortune.
Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.
Our companions please us less from the charms we find in their conversation than from those they find in ours.
Many with trust, with doubt few, are undone.
Envy is but the smoke of low estate, Ascending still against the fortunate.
I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.
