The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Every one desires to live long, but no one would be old.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
Ambition often puts Men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is performed in the same position with creeping.
In church your grandsire cut his throat; to do the job too long he tarried: he should have had my hearty vote to cut his throat before he married.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter or change his comrades once a quarter.
Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
The lack of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome.
There's none so blind as they that won't see.
As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches to conceive how others can be in want.
I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child, well nursed, is at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or a ragout.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives.
One of the very best rules of conversation is to never, say anything which any of the company wish had been left unsaid.
The most positive men are the most credulous.
For the rest, whatever we have got has been by infinite labor, and search, and ranging through every corner of nature; the difference is that instead of dirt and poison, we have rather chosen to fill our hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on with a pitch folk.
And he gave it for his opinion, that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Pretense is the overrating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to.
I will venture to affirm, that the three seasons wherein our corn has miscarried did no more contribute to our present misery, than one spoonful of water thrown upon a rat already drowned would contribute to his death; and that the present plentiful harvest, although it should be followed by a dozen ensuing, would no more restore us, than it would the rat aforesaid to put him near the fire, which might indeed warm his fur-coat, but never bring him back to life.
Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.
Two friendships in two breasts requires The same aversions and desires.
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Happiness is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.
What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly.
What some people invent the rest enlarge.
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society all the rest of the people are as slaves.
Come, agree, the law's costly.
May you live all the days of your life.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
Observation is an old man's memory.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
Don't set your wit against a child.
In the school of political projectors, I was but ill entertained, the professors appearing, in my judgment, wholly out of their senses; which is a scene that never fails to make me melancholy. These unhappy people were proposing schemes for persuading monarchs to choose favorites upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult the public good; of rewarding merit, great abilities, and eminent services, of instructing princes to know their true interest, by placing it on the same foundation with that of their people; of choosing for employment persons qualified to exercise them; with many other wild impossible chimeras, that never entered before into the heart of man to conceive; and confirmed in me the old observation, that there is nothing so extravagant and irrational which some philosophers have not maintained for truth.
The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance and never to keep his work.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.
It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.
Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
It was a bold person that first ate an oyster.
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.
Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.
He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.
But you think that it is time for me to have done with the world, and so I would if I could get into a better before I was called into the best, and not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.
Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.
A footman may swear; but he cannot swear like a lord. He can swear as often: but can he swear with equal delicacy, propriety, and judgment?
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Whoever wishes to win in this game must have patience and money, since the values are so little constant and the rumors so little founded on truth Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
O Grub Street! how do I bemoan thee, whose graceless children scorn to own thee! . Yet thou hast greater cause to be ashamed of them, than they of thee.
Style may defined as the proper words in the proper places.