Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

The cheat ambition, eager to espouse dominion, courts it with a lying show, and shines in borrowed pomp to serve a turn.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

He will always see the most beauty whose affections are the warmest and most exercised, whose imagination is the most powerful, and who has most accu…

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe…

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

The disease and its medicine are like two factions in a besieged town; they tear one another to pieces, but both unite against their common enemy, Na…

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

Nothing is so firmly than that which is least known.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

- Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey