Whatever you have spend less.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
I gleaned jests at home from obsolete farces.
Man is not weak; knowledge is more than equivalent to force.
His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.
Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want it.
And when a woman’s will is as strong as the man’s who wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour.
But lo! men have become the tools of their tools.
A man is a god in ruins.
To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, an they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.
Do not tell me of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong.
If there were no God, it would be necessary to invent him.
Every man is a consumer and ought to be a producer.
Even the best things are not equal to their fame.
I suffer whenever I see that common sight of a parent or senior imposing his opinion and way of thinking and being on a young soul to which they are totally unfit. Cannot we let people be themselves, and enjoy life in their own way? You are trying to make that man another you. One’s enough.
By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.
To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.
Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.
A man of genius is privileged only as far as he is genius. His dullness is as insupportable as any other dullness.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
