Jealousy is the fear or apprehension of superiority: envy our uneasiness under it.Collection: Jealousy
The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one.Collection: Patriotism
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.Collection: Truth
The best time to frame an answer to the letters of a friend, is the moment you receive them. Then the warmth of friendship, and the intelligence received, most forcibly cooperate.Collection: Intelligence
Hope is a flatterer, but the most upright of all parasites; for she frequents the poor man's hut, as well as the palace of his superior.Collection: Hope
Grandeur and beauty are so very opposite, that you often diminish the one as you increase the other. Variety is most akin to the latter, simplicity to the former.Collection: Beauty
The lines of poetry, the period of prose, and even the texts of Scripture most frequently recollected and quoted, are those which are felt to be preeminently musical.Collection: Poetry
Poetry and consumption are the most flattering of diseases.Collection: Poetry
Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.Collection: Anger
A fool and his words are soon parted.
A miser grows rich by seeming poor; an extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.
Zealous men are ever displaying to you the strength of their belief, while judicious men are showing you the grounds of it.
Virtues, like essences, lose their fragrance when exposed.
The world may be divided into people that read, people that write, people that think, and fox-hunters.
There is nothing more universally commended than a fine day; the reason is that people can commend it without envy.
The eye must be easy, before it can be pleased.
What leads to unhappiness, is making pleasure the chief aim.
Second thoughts oftentimes are the very worst of all thoughts.
A man has generally the good or ill qualities, which he attributes to mankind.
The regard one shows economy, is like that we show an old aunt who is to leave us something at last.
Every single instance of a friend's insincerity increases our dependence on the efficacy of money.
His knowledge of books had in some degree diminished his knowledge of the world.
Every good poet includes a critic, but the reverse is not true.
Laws are generally found to be nets of such a texture, as the little creep through, the great break through, and the middle-sized are alone entangled in it.
The weak and insipid white wine makes at length excellent vinegar.Collection: Wine
Men are sometimes accused of pride, merely because their accusers would be proud themselves were they in their places.Collection: Pride
Health is beauty, and the most perfect health is the most perfect beauty.Collection: Health
Deference is the most complicate, the most indirect, and the most elegant of all compliments.Collection: Compliment
To one who said, "I do not believe that there is an honest man in the world," another replied, "It is impossible that any one man should know all the world, but quite possible that one may know himself."Collection: Lying
A miser grows rich by seeming poor. An extravagant man grows poor by seeming rich.Collection: Money
Long sentences in a short composition are like large rooms in a little house.Collection: Writing
Love can be founded upon Nature only.Collection: Nature
Independence may be found in comparative as well as in absolute abundance; I mean where a person contracts his desires within the limits of his fortune.Collection: Mean
I have been formerly so silly as to hope that every servant I had might be made a friend; I am now convinced that the nature of servitude generally bears a contrary tendency. People's characters are to be chiefly collected from their education and place in life; birth itself does but little.Collection: Silly
Learning, like money, may be of so base a coin as to be utterly void of use; or, if sterling, may require good management to make it serve the purposes of sense or happiness.Collection: Good Man
Theirs is the present who can praise the past.Collection: Past
Nothing is sure in London, except expense.Collection: London
Fools are very often united in the strictest intimacies, as the lighter kinds of woods are the most closely glued together.Collection: Together
A person that would secure to himself great deference will, perhaps, gain his point by silence as effectually as by anything he can say.Collection: Silence
To thee, fair Freedom! I retire From flattery, cards, and dice, and din: Nor art thou found in mansions higher Than the low cot, or humble inn.Collection: Art
There are no persons more solicitous about the preservation of rank than those who have no rank at all. Observe the humors of a country christening, and you will find no court in Christendom so ceremonious as the quality of Brentford.Collection: Country
Patience is the panacea; but where does it grow, or who can swallow it?Collection: Patience
It seems with wit and good-nature, Utrum horum mavis accipe. Taste and good-nature are universally connected.Collection: Taste
The most reserved of men, that will not exchange two syllables together in an English coffee-house, should they meet at Ispahan, would drink sherbet and eat a mess of rice together.Collection: Sympathy
Persons are oftentimes misled in regard to their choice of dress by attending to the beauty of colors, rather than selecting such colors as may increase their own beauty.Collection: Color
Harmony of period and melody of style have greater weight than is generally imagined in the judgment we pass upon writing and writers. As a proof of this, let us reflect what texts of scripture, what lines in poetry, or what periods we most remember and quote, either in verse or prose, and we shall find them to be only musical ones.Collection: Writing
There is a certain flimsiness of poetry which seems expedient in a song.Collection: Song
People can commend the weather without envy.Collection: Weather
My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep.Collection: Sleep
Some men are called sagacious, merely on account of their avarice; whereas a child can clench its fist the moment it is born.Collection: Children