Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or ever reclaims the vicious.
There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.
There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.
Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.
It is an uncontrolled truth, that no man ever made an ill figure who understood his own talents, nor a good one who mistook them.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.
Unjustly poets we asperse: Truth shines the brighter clad in verse, And all the fictions they pursue Do but insinuate what is true.
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
I am not saying that Hitler was a choir boy. But I am saying, let him who was innocent in the Second World War cast the first stone.
With a whirl of thought oppressed I sink from reverie to rest. An horrid vision seized my head, I saw the graves give up their dead.
So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.
By the laws of God, of nature, of nations, and of your country you are and ought to be as free a people as your brethren in England.
Say, Britain, could you ever boast, Three poets in an age at most? Our chilling climate hardly bears A sprig of bays in fifty years.
When a man of genius appears in the world, it is immediately recognized by the fact that all the blockheads join forces against him.
So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns
Protestations of impartiality I shall make none. Theyare always useless and are besides perfect nonsense, when used bya news-monger.
Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.
'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
What poet would not grieve to see His brother write as well as he? But rather than they should excel, He'd wish his rivals all in Hell.
Then, rising with Aurora's light, The Muse invoked, sit down to write; Blot out, correct, insert, refine, Enlarge, diminish, interline.
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.
Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.
Rebukes are easy from our betters, From men of quality and letters; But when low dunces will affront, What man alive can stand the brunt?
This is every cook's opinion - no savory dish without an onion, but lest your kissing should be spoiled your onions must be fully boiled.
There never yet was, and never will be, a nation permanently great, consisting, for the greater part, of wretched and miserable families.
I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
I am not saying that during the Second World War Germany did not, under the leadership of the National Socialist government, commit crimes.
It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
I may be doomed to the stake and the fire, or to the scaffold tree, but it is not in me to falter if I can promote the work of emancipation.
You cannot stoke the fires of prejudice against German people and then not find that somewhere, sometime down the road it doesn't discharge.
And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.
So, naturalists observe, a flea; Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller fleas to bite 'em, And so proceed ad infinitum.
Blot out, correct, insert, refine, enlarge, diminish, interline. Be mindful, when invention fails. To scratch your head and bite your nails.
Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
But what is to be the fate of the great wen of all? The monster, called, by the silly coxcombs of the press, "the metropolis of the empire"?
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.
I cannot imagine why we should be at the expense to furnish wit for succeeding ages, when the former have made no sort of provision for ours.
This Day, whate'er the Fates decree; Shall still be kept with Joy by me: This Day then, let us not be told, That you are sick, and I grown old
Books, like men their authors, have no more than one wayofcoming intothe world, but there areten thousand to go out of it, and return no more.
A fig for partridges and quails, ye dainties I know nothing of ye; But on the highest mount in Wales Would choose in peace to drink my coffee.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.