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Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils. - [Foresight] Hurry and cunning are the two apprentices of despatch and skill; but neither of them ever learn their master's trade. - [Cunning] I have somewhere seen it observed that we should make the same use of a book that the bee does of a flower: she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it. - [Books] I question if Epicurus and Hume have done mankind a greater service by the looseness of their doctrines than by the purity of their lives. Of such men we may more justly exclaim, than of Caesar, "Confound their virtues, they've undone the world!" - [Example] I the weak resort of cowardice. - [Abuse] I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself. - [Revenge] Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle. - [Idleness] If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not. - [Books] If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends. - [Controversy : Discretion] If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way. - [Dueling] If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool. - [Obstinacy] If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same. - [Martyrs] If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation. - [Reproach] If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress. - [Intrigue] If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex. - [Decency] If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels. - [Oratory] If rich, it is easy enough to conceal your wealth; but if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal your poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas than one hole in our coat. - [Concealment] If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has. - [Hypocrisy] If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason. - [Sensuality] If that marvellous microcosm, man, with all the costly cargo of his faculties and powers, were indeed a rich argosy, fitted out and freighted only for shipwreck and destruction, who amongst us that tolerate the present only from the hope of the future, who that have any aspirings of a high and intellectual nature about them, could be brought to submit to the disgusting mortifications of the voyage? - [Future] If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill. - [Charity] If we steal thoughts from the moderns, it will be cried down as plagiarism; if from the ancients, it will be cried up as erudition. But in this respect every author is a Spartan, being more ashamed of the discovery than of the depredation. - [Plagiarism] If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade. - [Quarrels] If you cannot inspire a woman with love of you, fill her above the brim with love of herself; all that runs over will be yours. - [Courtship] If you want enemies, excel others; if you want friends, let others excel you. - [Enemies : Excellence] Displaying page 7 of 23 for this author: << Prev Next >> 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
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