“Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.”
“You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.”
“Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.”
“The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.”
“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.”
“The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.”
“It is better that some should be unhappy than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.”
“Our tastes greatly alter. The lad does not care for the child's rattle, and the old man does not care for the young man's whore.”
“Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage.”
“If I had no duties, and no reference to futurity, I would spend my life in driving briskly in a post-chaise with a pretty woman.”
“It is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them.”
“The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.”
“Those who attain to any excellence commonly spend life in some single pursuit, for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.”
“Sir, he throws away his money without thought and without merit. I do not call a tree generous that sheds its fruit at every breeze.”
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”
“Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them.”
“Sir, he was dull in company, dull in his closet, dull everywhere. He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great.”
“Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.”
“When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.”
“I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.”
“I found you essay to be good and original. However, the part that was original was not good and the part that was good was not original.”
“Life must be filled up, and the man who is not capable of intellectual pleasures must content himself with such as his senses can afford.”
“Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.”
“I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.”
“Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.”
“To act from pure benevolence is not possible for finite human beings, Human benevolence is mingled with vanity, interest, or some other motive.”
“What ever the motive for the insult, it is always best to overlook it; for folly doesn't deserve resentment, and malice is punished by neglect.”
“Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.”
“There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.”
“Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.”