That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.
The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.
There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.
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.
That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.
Truth, Sir, is a cow which will yield such people no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull.
Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others… This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.
I know not any thing more pleasant, or more instructive, than to compare experience with expectation, or to register from time to time the difference between idea and reality. It is by this kind of observation that we grow daily less liable to be disappointed.
Prejudice not being funded on reason cannot be removed by argument.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
And then, Sir, there is this consideration, that if the abuse be enormous, nature will rise up, and claiming her original rights, overturn a corrupt political system.
No man was ever great by imitation.
Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.
Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.
He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.
Next Page »
