Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We oftener say things because we can say them well, than because they are sound and reasonable.
The religion of Christ is peace and good-will,--the religion of Christendom is war and ill-will.
Next in criminality to him who violates the laws of his country, is he who violates the language.
When a woman hath ceased to be quite the same to us, it matters little how different she becomes.
Modesty and diffidence make a man unfit for public affairs; they also make him unfit for brothels.
In the morn of life we are alert, we are heated in its noon, and only in its decline do we repose.
Clear writers, like fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound.
Other offences, even the greatest, are the violation of one law: despotism is the violation of all.
Ambition does not see the earth she treads on: The rock and the herbage are of one substance to her.
The tomb is the pedestal of greatness. I make a distinction between God's great and the king's great.
Every sect is a moral check on its neighbour. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.
There are proud men of so much delicacy that it almost conceals their pride, and perfectly excuses it.
The present, like a note in music, is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is to come.
That which moveth the heart most is the best poetry; it comes nearest unto God, the source of all power.
If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.
I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.
All schools of philosophy, and almost all authors, are rather to be frequented for exercise than for weight.
Truth sometimes corner unawares upon Caution, and sometimes speaks in public as unconsciously as in a dream.
Study is the bane of childhood, the oil of youth, the indulgence of adulthood, and a restorative in old age.
As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.
The wise become as the unwise in the enchanted chambers of Power, whose lamps make every face the same colour.
Fame, they tell you, is air; but without air there is no life for any; without fame there is none for the best.
Authors are like cattle going to a fair: those of the same field can never move on without butting one another.
Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. Fancy is always excursive; imagination, not seldom, is sedate.
We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could.
The happiest of pillows is not that which love first presses! it is that which death has frowned on and passed over.
Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!
Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.
O Music! how it grieves me that imprudence, intemperance, gluttony, should open their channels into thy sacred stream.
Piety--warm, soft, and passive as the ether round the throne of Grace--is made callous and inactive by kneeling too much.
Two evils, of almost equal weight, may befall the man of erudition; never to be listened to, and to be listened to always.
It is delightful to kiss the eyelashes of the beloved--is it not? But never so delightful as when fresh tears are on them.
Little men build up great ones, but the snow colossus soon melts; the good stand under the eye of God, and therefore stand.
Of all failures, to fail in a witticism is the worst, and the mishap is the more calamitous in a drawn-out and detailed one
Let a gentleman be known to have been cheated of twenty pounds, and it costs him forty a-year for the remainder of his life.
I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.
The habit of pleasing by flattery makes a language soft; the fear of offending by truth makes it circuitous and conventional.
The sweetest souls, like the sweetest flowers, soon canker in cities, and no purity is rarer there than the purity of delight.
I have since written what no tide Shall ever wash away, what men Unborn shall read o'er ocean wide And find Ianthe's name agen.
Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world.
The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.
When we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!
Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low or so little as when occupied with the present.
As we sometimes find one thing while we are looking for another, so, if truth escaped me, happiness and contentment fell in my way.
Justice is often pale and melancholy; but Gratitude, her daughter, is constantly in the flow of spirits and the bloom of loveliness.
No friendship is so cordial or so delicious as that of girl for girl; no hatred so intense and immovable as that of woman for woman.
When the mind loses its feeling for elegance, it grows corrupt and groveling, and seeks in the crowd what ought to be found at home.
An ingenuous mind feels in unmerited praise the bitterest reproof. If you reject it you are unhappy, if you accept it you are undone.
We are poor, indeed, when we have no half-wishes left us. The heart and the imagination close the shutters the instant they are gone.