Friends are thieves of time.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.
The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man’s intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man’s self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.
Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.
The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.
Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.
Wise men make more opportunities than they find.
Men being born with a title to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature . . . no one can be put out of his estate and subjected to the political view of another, without his consent.
Follow your own passion – not your parents’, not your teachers’- yours.
The greatest man in history was the poorest.
Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.
We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.
Light is the first of painters. There is no object so foul that intense light will not make it beautiful.
Genius always finds itself a century too early.
Be true to your own act and congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant to break the monotony of a decorous age.
Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood
He who is taught to live upon little owes more to his father’s wisdom than he who has a great deal left him does to his father’s care.
The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.
Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure
