Fire and people do in this agree,They both good servants, both ill masters be..

Genius always looks forward, and not only sees what is, but what necessarily will be..

One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world, is, their finding so little there: generosity is catching; and if so many men es….

There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious m….

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens..

Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly..

Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error..

Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them..

Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it..

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!.

Wit catches of wit, as fire of fire..

How seldom is generosity perfect and pure! How often do men give because it throws a certain inferiority on those who receive, and superiority on the….

We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own..

Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their….

We are oftener deceived by being told some truth than no truth..

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound..

The greatest slave in a kingdom is generally the king of it..

It by no means follows, that because two men utter the same words, they have precisely the same idea which they mean to express: language is inadequa….

Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people..

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?.

Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all….