“The bow cannot always stand bent, nor can human frailty subsist without some lawful recreation.”
“I have always heard, Sancho, that doing good to base fellows is like throwing water into the sea.”
“Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.”
“Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the other.”
“Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.”
“He who loses wealth loses much; he who loses a friend loses more; but he that loses his courage loses all.”
“The most difficult character in comedy is that of the fool, and he must be no simpleton that plays that part.”
“To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action, when there's more reason to fear than to hope.”
“Though God's attributes are equal, yet his mercy is more attractive and pleasing in our eyes than his justice.”
“It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow.”
“My grandma (rest her soul) used to say, ''There were but two families in the world, have-much and have-little.''”
“The gratification of wealth is not found in mere possession or in lavish expenditure, but in its wise application.”
“By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.”
“One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.”
“The phoenix hope, can wing her way through the desert skies, and still defying fortune's spite; revive from ashes and rise.”
“Diligence is the mother of good fortune, and idleness, its opposite, never brought a man to the goal of any of his best wishes.”
“Nor has his death the world deceiv'd than his wondrous life surprise d; if he like a madman liv'd least he like a wise one dy'd.”
“I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.”
“For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences.”
“I do not say a proverb is amiss when aptly and reasonably applied, but to be forever discharging them, right or wrong, hit or miss, renders conversation insipid and vulgar.”
“There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously removes or at least alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.”
“If you are ambitious of climbing up to the difficult, and in a manner inaccessible, summit of the Temple of Fame, your surest way is to leave on one hand the narrow path of Poetry, and follow the narrower track of Knight-Errantry, which in a trice may raise you to an imperial throne.”
“'Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.”
“Thou camest out of thy mother's belly without government, thou hast liv'd hitherto without government, and thou mayst be carried to thy long home without government, when it shall please the Lord. How many people in this world live without government, yet do well enough, and are well look'd upon?”
“Liberty is one of the most precious gifts which heaven has bestowed on man; with it we cannot compare the treasures which the earth contains or the sea conceals; for liberty, as for honor, we can and ought to risk our lives; and, on for the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can befall man.”
“For historians ought to be precise, truthful, and quite unprejudiced, and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should cause them to swerve from the path of truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instruction of the present, the monitor of the future.”
“'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it.”
“One who has not only the four S's, which are required in every good lover, but even the whole alphabet; as for example... Agreeable, Bountiful, Constant, Dutiful, Easy, Faithful, Gallant, Honorable, Ingenious, Kind, Loyal, Mild, Noble, Officious, Prudent, Quiet, Rich, Secret, True, Valiant, Wise; the X indeed, is too harsh a letter to agree with him, but he is Young and Zealous.”
“And for the citation of so many authors, 'tis the easiest thing in nature. Find out one of these books with an alphabetical index, and without any farther ceremony, remove it verbatim into your own... there are fools enough to be thus drawn into an opinion of the work; at least, such a flourishing train of attendants will give your book a fashionable air, and recommend it for sale.”
“Now blessings light on him that first invented this same sleep: it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; 'Tis meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot. 'Tis the current coin that purchases all the pleasures of the world cheap; and the balance that sets the king and the shepherd, the fool and the wise-man even. There is only one thing that I dislike in sleep; 'Tis that it resembles death; there's very little difference between a man in his first sleep, and a man in his last sleep.”