Few things tend more to alienate friendship than a want of punctuality in our engagements. I have known the breach of a promise to dine or sup to break up more than one intimacy.
There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue. Vice and infamy have their altars and their religion.
Fame is the inheritance not of the dead, but of the living. It is we who look back with lofty pride to the great names of antiquity.
Satirists gain the applause of others through fear, not through love.
A nickname is the heaviest stone that the devil can throw at a man. It is a bugbear to the imagination, and, though we do not believe in it, it still haunts our apprehensions.
No one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.
The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
A grave blockhead should always go about with a lively one - they show one another off to the best advantage.
I would like to spend the whole of my life traveling, if I could anywhere borrow another life to spend at home.
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
To give a reason for anything is to breed a doubt of it.
A hair in the head is worth two in the brush.
Do not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the substance is gone - but part, while you can part friends. Bury the carcass of friendship: it is not worth embalming.
The busier we are the more leisure we have.
When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest.
The dupe of friendship, and the fool of love; have I not reason to hate and to despise myself? Indeed I do; and chiefly for not having hated and despised the world enough.
We often choose a friend as we do a mistress - for no particular excellence in themselves, but merely from some circumstance that flatters our self-love.
The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be constantly wound up.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
