If time, like money, could be laid by while one was not using it, there might be some excuse for the idleness of half of the world, but yet not a full one. For even this would be such an economy as the living on a principal sum, without making it purchase interest.
Go, poor devil, get thee gone! Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.
Men tire themselves in pursuit of rest.
A man should know something of his own country too, before he goes abroad.
When a man gives himself up to the government of a ruling passion,--or, in other words, when his HOBBY-HORSE grows head- strong,--farewell cool reason and fair discretion.
I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in every thing, and who, having eyes to see, what time and chance are perpetually holding out to him as he journeyeth on his way, misses nothing he can fairly lay his hands on.
Upon the present theological computation, ten souls must be lost for one that is saved. At which rate of reckoning, heaven can raise but its cohorts while hell commands its legions. From which sad account it would appear, that, though our Saviour had conquered death by the resurrection, he had not yet been able to overcome sin by the redemption.
Solitude is the best nurse of wisdom.
Pain and pleasure, like light and darkness, succeed each other.
The sad vicissitude of things.
There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.
An English man does not travel to see English men.
Vanity bids all her sons be brave, and all her daughters chaste and courteous.
Heat is in proportion to the want of true knowledge.
The best hearts are ever the bravest.
When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!
I have undertaken, you see, to write not only my life, but my opinions also; hoping and expecting that your knowledge of my character, and of what kind of a mortal I am, by the one, would give you a better relish for the other: As you proceed further with me, the slight acquaintance which is now beginning betwixt us, will grow into familiarity; and that, unless one of us is in fault, will terminate in friendship.
The world is ashamed of being virtuous.
The circumstances with which every thing in this world is begirt, give every thing in this world its size and shape;--and by tightening it, or relaxing it, this way or that, make the thing to be, what it is--great--little--good--bad--indifferent or not indifferent, just as the case happens.
Patience cannot remove, but it can always dignify and alleviate, misfortune.
I had had an affair with the moon, in which there was neither sin nor shame.
When a man is discontented with himself, it has one advantage - that it puts him into an excellent frame of mind for making a bargain.
The most affluent may be stripped of all, and find his worldly comforts, like so many withered leaves, dropping from him.
Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves.
When the heart flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains.
The proper education of poor children [is] the ground-work of almost every other kind of charity.... Without this foundation firstlaid, how much kindnessis unavoidably cast away?
An actor should be able to create the universe in the palm of his hand.
Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.
If thou art rich, then show the greatness of thy fortune; or what is better, the greatness of thy soul, in the meekness of thy conversation; condescend to men of low estate, support the distressed, and patronize the neglected. Be great.
I am persuaded that every time a man smiles - but much more so when he laughs - it adds something to this fragment of life.
Injuries come only from the heart.
Shall we for ever make new books, as apothecaries make new mixtures, by pouring only out of one vessel into another?
A man who values a good night's rest will not lie down with enmity in his heart, if he can help it.
To saya man is fallen in love,or that he is deeply in love,or up to the ears in love,and sometimes even over head and ears in it,carries an idiomatical kind of implication, that love is a thing below a man:this is recurring again to Plato's opinion, which, with all his divinityship,I hold to be damnable and heretical:and so much for that. Let love therefore be what it will,my uncleToby fell into it.
O blessed Health! thou art above all gold and treasure; 'tis thou who enlargest the soul, and openest all its powers to receive instruction, and to relish virtue. He that has thee has little more to wish for, and he that is so wretched as to want thee, wants everything with thee.
Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.
I am positive I have a soul; nor can all the books with which materialists have pestered the world ever convince me to the contrary.
I hate set dissertations,--and above all things in the world, 'tis one of the silliest things in one of them, to darken your hypothesis by placing a number of tall, opake words, one before another, in a right line, betwixt your own and your readers conception.
I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us--but I seldom resist him at all; from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat--soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.
Endless is the search of truth.
The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
When the affections so kindly break loose, Joy, is another name for Religion.
Now or never was the time.
I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.
I often derive a peculiar satisfaction in conversing with the ancient and modern dead, — who yet live and speak excellently in their works. My neighbors think me often alone, — and yet at such times I am in company with more than five hundred mutes — each of whom, at my pleasure, communicates his ideas to me by dumb signs — quite as intelligently as any person living can do by uttering of words.
We lose the right of complaining sometimes, by denying something, but this often triples its force.
A good simile,--as concise as a king's declaration of love.
The desire of knowledge, like the thirst of riches, increases ever with the acquisition of it.
Sight is by much the noblest of the senses. We receive our notices from the other four, through the organs of sensation only. We hear, we feel, we smell, we taste, by touch. But sight rises infinitely higher. It is refined above matter, and equals the faculty of spirit.
I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.
It is sweet to feel by what fine spun threads our affections are drawn together.
The history of a soldier's wound beguiles the pain of it.
Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.
People who overly take care of their health are like misers. They hoard up a treasure which they never enjoy.
Courtship consists in a number of quiet attentions, not so pointed as to alarm, nor so vague as not to be understood.
An inward sincerity will of course influence the outward deportment; but where the one is wanting, there is great reason to suspect the absence of the other.
Every thing in this world, said my father, is big with jest,--and has wit in it, and instruction too,--if we can but find it out.
Only the brave know how to forgive; it is the most refined and generous pitch of virtue human nature can arrive at.
For every ten jokes you acquire a hundred enemies.
"They order," said I, "this matter better in France."
Every obstruction of the course of justice,--is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has inview.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.
The soul and body are joint-sharers in every thing they get: A man cannot dress, but his ideas get cloath'd at the same time; andif he dresses like a gentleman, every one of them stands presented to his imagination, genteelized along with him.
Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.
I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life.
Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.
The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.
Writings may be compared to wine. Sense is the strength, but wit the flavor.
There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep.
I begin with writing the first sentence—and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Whatever stress some may lay upon it, a death-bed repentance is but a weak and slender plank to trust our all on.
We all cry out that the world is corrupt,--and I fear too justly,--but we never reflect, what we have to thank for it, and that itis our open countenance of vice, which gives the lye to our private censures of it, which is its chief protection and encouragement.
There have been no sects in the Christian world, however absurd, which have not endeavoured to support their opinions by arguments drawn from Scripture.
Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.
Chance is the providence of adventurers.
Sciences may be learned by rote, but wisdom not.
'Tis known by the name of perseverance in a good cause,-and of obstinacy in a bad one.
The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.
Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.
There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.
Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?
So often has my judgment deceived me in my life, that I always suspect it, right or wrong,--at least I am seldom hot upon cold subjects. For all this, I reverence truth as much as any body; andif a man will but take me by the hand, and go quietly and search for itI'll go to the world's end with him:MBut I hate disputes.
So fruitful is slander in variety of expedients to satiate as well as disguise itself. But if these smoother weapons cut so sore, what shall we say of open and unblushing scandal, subjected to no caution, tied down to no restraints?
Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it; it unlooses the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman's task into another man's hand.
The mind should be accustomed to make wise reflections, and draw curious conclusions as it goes along; the habitude of which made Pliny the Younger affirm that he never read book so bad but he drew some profit from it.
For I begin with writing the first sentence, — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.
Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.
Always carry it in thy mind, and act upon it, as a sure maxim: "That women are timid:" And 'tis well they are--else there would beno dealing with them.
A dwarf who brings a standard along with him to measure his own size, take my word, is a dwarf in more articles than one.
Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.
What persons are by starts they are by nature.
Learning is the dictionary, but sense the grammar of science.
People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.
I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.
The great end of all religionis to purify our hearts--and conquer our passions--and in a word, to make us wiser and better men--better neighbours--better citizens--and better servants of GOD.
So long as a man rides his hobbyhorse peaceably and quietly along the King's highway, and neither compels you or me to get up behind him - pray, Sir, what have either you or I to do with it?
What is the life of man! Is it not to shift from side to side? From sorrow to sorrow? To button up one cause of vexation! And unbutton another!
Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.
Most of us are aware of and pretend to detest the barefaced instances of that hypocrisy by which men deceive others, but few of us are upon our guard or see that more fatal hypocrisy by which we deceive and over-reach our own hearts.
If a man has a right to be proud of anything, it is of a good action done as it ought to be, without any base interest lurking at the bottom of it.
Positiveness is a most absurd foible. If you are in the right, it lessens your triumph; if in the wrong, it adds shame to your defeat.
So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.
Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.
An atheist is more reclaimable than a papist, as ignorance is sooner cured than superstition.
True Shandeism, think what you will against it, opens the heart and lungs, and like all those affections which partake of its nature, it forces the blood and other vital fluids of the body to run freely thro' its channels, and makes the wheel of life run long and chearfully round.
Philosophy has a fine saying for everything.-For Death it has an entire set.
God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.
The way to fame, is like the way to heaven,--through much tribulation.
The histories of the lives and fortunes of men are full of instances of this nature,--where favorable times and lucky accidents have done for them, what wisdom or skill could not.
Men tire themselves in the pursuit of sleep.
There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let penetrating eye at once into a man's soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, --or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.
Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.
Our passion and principals are constantly in a frenzy, but begin to shift and waver, as we return to reason.
Only the brave know how to forgive... a coward never forgave; it is not in his nature.
In solitude the mind gains strength and learns to lean upon itself.
We are born to trouble; and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.
How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.
A coward never forgives.
It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.
Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
Beauty has so many charms, one knows not how to speak against it; and when it happens that a graceful figure is the habitation of a virtuous soul, when the beauty of the face speaks out the modesty and humility of the mind, and the justness of the proportion raises our thoughts up to the heart and wisdom of the great Creator, something may be allowed it,--and something to the embellishments which set it off; and yet, when the whole apology is read, it will be found at last that beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.
There is no such thing as real happiness in life. The justest definition that was ever given of it was "a tranquil acquiescence under an agreeable delusion"--I forget where.
Keep away from the fire!
