The luster of diamonds is invigorated by the interposition of darker bodies; the lights of a picture are created by the shades; the highest pleasure which nature has indulged to sensitive perception is that of rest after fatigue.
The real satisfaction which praise can afford, is when what is repeated aloud agrees with the whispers of conscience, by showing us that we have not endeavored to deserve well in vain.
The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.
Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.
Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favorable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.
If he really thinks there is no distinction between vice and virtue, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.
Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things they denote.
Fear is implanted in us as a preservative from evil; but its duty, like that of other passions, is not to overbear reason, but to assist it. It should not be suffered to tyrannize
There are few minds to which tyranny is not delightful.
He who waits to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.
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.
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
It is, indeed, at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often dressed for show in painted honor, and fictitious benevolence.
What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn’t deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.
We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.
Some people wave their dogmatic thinking until their own reason is entangled.
Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye.
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
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