Bravery has no place where it can avail nothing.
Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.
Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.
If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.
Treating your adversary with respect is giving him an advantage to which he is not entitled.
You can’t be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who’s for you and who’s against you.
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
Pleasure that is obtained by unreasonable and unsuitable cost, must always end in pain.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience. You will find it a calamity.
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Life will not bear refinement. You must do as other people do.
It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation — a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.
I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint, and too numerous for removal.
Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.
A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.
It is the great privilege of poverty to be happy and yet unenvied, to be healthy with physic, secure without a guard, and to obtain from the bounty of nature what the great and wealthy are compelled to procure by the help of art.
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.
Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor.
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