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A Life Of Action And Danger Moderates The Dread Of Death. It Not Only Gives Us Fortitude To Bear Pain, But Teaches Us At Every Step The Precarious Tenure On Which We Hold Our Present Being.

-William Hazlitt

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A Life Of Action

William Hazlitt

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A Life Of Action And Danger Moderates The Dread Of Death. It Not Only Gives Us Fortitude To Bear Pain, But Teaches Us At Every Step The Precarious Tenure On Which We Hold Our Present Being.

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We Trifle With, Make Sport Of, And Despise Those Who Are Attached To Us, And Follow Those That Fly From Us.

A Woman's Vanity Is Interested In Making The Object Of Her Choice The God Of Her Idolatry.

That Which Anyone Has Been Long Learning Unwillingly, He Unlearns With Proportional Eagerness And Haste.

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.

The Imagination Is Of So Delicate A Texture That Even Words Wound It.

When I Take Up A Book I Have Read Before, I Know What To Expect; The Satisfaction Is Not Lessened By Being Anticipated. I Shake Hands With, And Look Our Old Tried And Valued Friend In The Face,--compare Notes And Chat The Hour Away.

There Is A Heroism In Crime As Well As In Virtue. Vice And Infamy Have Their Altars And Their Religion.

His Hypothesis Goes To This - To Make The Common Run Of His Readers Fancy They Can Do All That Can Be Done By Genius, And To Make The Man Of Genius Believe He Can Only Do What Is To Be Done By Mechanical Rules And Systematic Industry. This Is Not A Very Feasible Scheme; Nor Is Sir Joshua Sufficiently Clear And Explicit In His Reasoning In Support Of It.

The Way To Procure Insults Is To Submit To Them. A Man Meets With No More Respect Than He Exacts.

Zeal Will Do More Than Knowledge.

The Mind Revolts Against Certain Opinions, As The Stomach Rejects Certain Foods.

The Great Have Private Feelings Of Their Own, To Which The Interests Of Humanity And Justice Must Curtsy. Their Interests Are So Far From Being The Same As Those Of The Community, That They Are In Direct And Necessary Opposition To Them; Their Power Is At The Expense Of Our Weakness; Their Riches Of Our Poverty; Their Pride Of Our Degradation; Their Splendour Of Our Wretchedness; Their Tyranny Of Our Servitude.

When One Can Do Better Than Everyone Else In The Same Walk, One Does Not Make Any Very Painful Exertions To Outdo Oneself. The Progress Of Improvement Ceases Nearly At The Point Where Competition Ends.

Poetry Is Only The Highest Eloquence Of Passion, The Most Vivid Form Of Expression That Can Be Given To Our Conception Of Anything, Whether Pleasurable Or Painful, Mean Or Dignified, Delightful Or Distressing. It Is The Perfect Coincidence Of The Image And The Words With The Feeling We Have, And Of Which We Cannot Get Rid In Any Other Way, That Gives An Instant "satisfaction To The Thought." This Is Equally The Origin Of Wit And Fancy, Of Comedy And Tragedy, Of The Sublime And Pathetic.

The World Loves To Be Amused By Hollow Professions, To Be Deceived By Flattering Appearances, To Live In A State Of Hallucination; And Can Forgive Everything But The Plain, Downright, Simple, Honest Truth.

The Player Envies Only The Player, The Poet Envies Only The Poet.

Modesty Is The Lowest Of The Virtues, And Is A Real Confession Of The Deficiency It Indicates. He Who Undervalues Himself Is Justly Undervalued By Others.

Actors Are The Only Honest Hypocrites.

Indolence Is A Delightful But Distressing State; We Must Be Doing Something To Be Happy. Action Is No Less Necessary Than Thought To The Instinctive Tendencies Of The Human Frame.

Every Man, In Judging Of Himself, Is His Own Contemporary. He May Feel The Gale Of Popularity, But He Cannot Tell How Long It Will Last. His Opinion Of Himself Wants Distance, Wants Time, Wants Numbers, To Set It Off And Confirm It.

The Art Of Pleasing Consists In Being Pleased.

A Certain Excess Of Animal Spirits With Thoughtless Good-humor Will Often Make More Enemies Than The Most Deliberate Spite And Ill-nature, Which Is On Its Guard, And Strikes With Caution And Safety.

Without Life There Can Be No Action — No Objects Of Pursuit — No Restless Desires — No Tormenting Passions. Hence It Is That We Fondly Cling To It — That We Dread Its Termination As The Close, Not Of Enjoyment, But Of Hope.

Success In Business Is Seldom Owing To Uncommon Talents Or Original Power Which Is Untractable And Self-willed, But To The Greatest Degree Of Commonplace Capacity.

General Principles Are Not The Less True Or Important Because From Their Nature They Elude Immediate Observation; They Are Like The Air, Which Is Not The Less Necessary Because We Neither See Nor Feel It.

Art Is The Microscope Of The Mind, Which Sharpens The Wit As The Other Does The Sight; And Converts Every Object Into A Little Universe In Itself. Art May Be Said To Draw Aside The Veil From Nature. To Those Who Are Perfectly Unskilled In The Practice, Unimbued With The Principles Of Art, Most Objects Present Only A Confused Mass.

The Ignorance Of The World Leaves One At The Mercy Of Its Malice.

A Thought Must Tell At Once, Or Not At All.

Wit Is The Rarest Quality To Be Met With Among People Of Education, And The Most Common Among The Uneducated.

Wit Is, In Fact, The Eloquence Of Indifference.

The Truly Proud Man Knows Neither Superiors Or Inferiors. The First He Does Not Admit Of - The Last He Does Not Concern Himself About.

They [corporations] Feel Neither Shame, Remorse, Gratitude, Nor Goodwill.

Learning Is The Knowledge Of That Which None But The Learned Know.

There Are Names Written In Her Immortal Scroll At Which Fame Blushes!

Those Who Have Little Shall Have Less, And That Those Who Have Much Shall Take All That Others Have Left.

Those Who Are Fond Of Setting Things To Rights, Have No Great Objection To Seeing Them Wrong.

Spleen Can Subsist On Any Kind Of Food.

The Same Reason Makes A Man A Religious Enthusiast That Makes A Man An Enthusiast In Any Other Way ... An Uncomfortable Mind In An Uncomfortable Body.

We Are Not Satisfied To Be Right, Unless We Can Prove Others To Be Quite Wrong.

Learning Is, In Too Many Cases, But A Foil To Common Sense; A Substitute For True Knowledge.

As We Are Poetical In Our Natures, So We Delight In Fable.

If A Person Has No Delicacy, He Has You In His Power.

A Man In Love Prefers His Passion To Every Other Consideration, And Is Fonder Of His Mistress Than He Is Of Virtue. Should She Prove Vicious, She Makes Vice Lovely In His Eyes.

A Great Chess-player Is Not A Great Man, For He Leaves The World As He Found It. No Act Terminating In Itself Constitutes Greatness. This Will Apply To All Displays Of Power Or Trials Of Skill, Which Are Confined To The Momentary, Individual Effort, And Construct No Permanent Image Or Trophy Of Themselves Without Them

There Are Many Who Talk On From Ignorance Rather Than From Knowledge, And Who Find The Former An Inexhaustible Fund Of Conversation.

Dr. Johnson Was A Lazy Learned Man Who Liked To Think And Talk Better Than To Read Or Write; Who, However, Wrote Much And Well, But Too Often By Rote.

The History Of Mankind Is A Romance, A Mask, A Tragedy, Constructed Upon The Principles Of Poetical Justice; It Is A Noble Or Royal Hunt, In Which What Is Sport To The Few Is Death To The Many, And In Which The Spectators Halloo And Encourage The Strong To Set Upon The Weak, And Cry Havoc In The Chase, Though They Do Not Share In The Spoil.

It Is Better To Drink Of Deep Grief Than To Taste Shallow Pleasures.

By Conversing With The Mighty Dead, We Imbibe Sentiment With Knowledge. We Become Strongly Attached To Those Who Can No Longer Either Hurt Or Serve Us, Except Through The Influence Which They Exert Over The Mind. We Feel The Presence Of That Power Which Gives Immortality To Human Thoughts And Actions, And Catch The Flame Of Enthusiasm From All Nations And Ages.

Those Who Can Command Themselves Command Others.

Of All Virtues, Magnanimity Is The Rarest. There Are A Hundred Persons Of Merit For One Who Willingly Acknowledges It In Another.

The Only True Retirement Is That Of The Heart; The Only True Leisure Is The Repose Of The Passions. To Such Persons It Makes Little Difference Whether They Are Young Or Old; And They Die As They Have Lived, With Graceful Resignation.

I Have A Much Greater Ambition To Be The Best Racket Player Than The Best Prose Writer.

Mankind Are An Incorrigible Race. Give Them But Bugbears And Idols -- It Is All That They Ask; The Distinctions Of Right And Wrong, Of Truth And Falsehood, Of Good And Evil, Are Worse Than Indifferent To Them.

The Last Sort I Shall Mention Are Verbal Critics - Mere Word-catchers, Fellows That Pick Out A Word In A Sentence And A Sentence In A Volume, And Tell You It Is Wrong. The Title Of Ultra-crepidarian Critics Has Been Given To A Variety Of This Species.

Rules And Models Destroy Genius And Art.

Vulgar Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of Accident, Ignorance, Or Authority; Natural Prejudices Are Those Which Arise Out Of The Constitution Of The Human Mind Itself.

Truth From The Mouth Of An Honest Man And Severity From A Good-natured Man Have A Double Effect.

We Are Very Much What Others Think Of Us. The Reception Our Observations Meet With Gives Us Courage To Proceed, Or Damps Our Efforts.

We Are Cold To Others Only When We Are Dull In Ourselves.

Malice Often Takes The Garb Of Truth.

Old Friendships Are Like Meats Served Up Repeatedly, Cold, Comfortless, And Distasteful. The Stomach Turns Against Them.

The Only Impeccable Writers Are Those Who Never Wrote.

In What We Really Understand, We Reason But Little.

Habitual Liars Invent Falsehoods Not To Gain Any End Or Even To Deceive Their Hearers, But To Amuse Themselves. It Is Partly Practice And Partly Habit. It Requires An Effort In Them To Speak Truth.

The Irish Are Hearty, The Scotch Plausible, The French Polite, The Germans Good-natured, The Italians Courtly, The Spaniards Reserved And Decorous - The English Alone Seem To Exist In Taking And Giving Offense.

Envy Is Littleness Of Soul.

Art Must Anchor In Nature, Or It Is The Sport Of Every Breath Of Folly.

Painting For A Whole Morning Gives One As Excellent An Appetite For One's Dinner, As Old Abraham Tucker Acquired For His By Riding Over Banstead Downs.

A Strong Passion For Any Object Will Ensure Success, For The Desire Of The End Will Point Out The Means.

Look Up, Laugh Loud, Talk Big, Keep The Color In Your Cheek And The Fire In Your Eye, Adorn Your Person, Maintain Your Health, Your Beauty And Your Animal Spirits.

I Am Proud Up To The Point Of Equality; Everything Above Or Below That Appears To Me Arrant Impertinence Or Abject Meanness.

I Am Not, In The Ordinary Acceptation Of The Term, A Good-natured Man; That Is, Many Things Annoy Me Besides What Interferes With My Own Ease And Interest. I Hate A Lie; A Piece Of Injustice Wounds Me To The Quick, Though Nothing But The Report Of It Reach Me. Therefore I Have Made Many Enemies And Few Friends; For The Public Know Nothing Of Well-wishers, And Keep A Wary Eye On Those Who Would Reform Them.

If You Think You Can Win, You Can Win. Faith Is Necessary To Victory.

Comedy Naturally Wears Itself Out - Destroys The Very Food On Which It Lives; And By Constantly And Successfully Exposing The Follies And Weaknesses Of Mankind To Ridicule, In The End Leaves Itself Nothing Worth Laughing At.

A Man's Reputation Is Not In His Own Keeping, But Lies At The Mercy Of The Profligacy Of Others. Calumny Requires No Proof.

One Is Always More Vexed At Losing A Game Of Any Sort By A Single Hole Or Ace, Than If One Has Never Had A Chance Of Winning It.

We Are All Of Us, More Or Less, The Slaves Of Opinion.

There Is No One Thoroughly Despicable. We Cannot Descend Much Lower Than An Idiot; And An Idiot Has Some Advantages Over A Wise Man.

The Greatest Pleasure In Life Is That Of Reading While We Are Young. I Have Had As Much Of This Pleasure Perhaps As Any One.

Our Lives Are Ruled By Impermanence. The Challenge Is How To Create Something Of Enduring Value Within The Context Of Our Impermanent Lives. Soka Gakkai Great Thoughts Reduced To Practice Become Great Acts.

The True Barbarian Is He Who Thinks Everything Barbarous But His Own Tastes And Prejudices.

The Way To Secure Success Is To Be More Anxious About Obtaining Than About Deserving It.

Our Energy Is In Proportion To The Resistance It Meets. We Attempt Nothing Great But From A Sense Of The Difficulties We Have To Encounter, We Persevere In Nothing Great But From A Pride In Overcoming Them.

There Is Not A More Mean, Stupid, Dastardly, Pitiful, Selfish, Spiteful, Envious, Ungrateful Animal Than The Public. It Is The Greatest Of Cowards, For It Is Afraid Of Itself.

Pride Is Founded Not On The Sense Of Happiness, But On The Sense Of Power.

Our Energy Is In Proportion To The Resistance It Meets.

With Women, The Great Business Of Life Is Love; And They Generally Make A Mistake In It. They Consult Neither The Heart Nor The Head, But Are Led Away By Mere Humour And Fancy. If Instead Of A Companion For Life, They Had To Choose A Partner In A Country-dance Or To Trifle Away An Hour With, Their Mode Of Calculation Would Be Right. They Tie Their True-lover's Knot With Idle, Thoughtless Haste, While The Institutions Of Society Render It Indissoluble.

Perhaps The Best Cure For The Fear Of Death Is To Reflect That Life Has A Beginning As Well As An End. There Was A Time When We Were Not: This Gives Us No Concern. Why, Then, Should It Trouble Us That A Time Will Come When We Shall Cease To Be?

To Expect An Author To Talk As He Writes Is Ridiculous; Or Even If He Did You Would Find Fault With Him As A Pedant.

To Be Happy, We Must Be True To Nature And Carry Our Age Along With Us.

Diffidence And Awkwardness Are Antidotes To Love.

Perhaps Propriety Is As Near A Word As Any To Denote The Manners Of The Gentleman; Elegance Is Necessary To The Fine Gentleman; Dignity Is Proper To Noblemen; And Majesty To Kings.

Those Only Deserve A Monument Who Do Not Need One; That Is, Who Have Raised Themselves A Monument In The Minds And Memories Of Men.

We Cannot By A Little Verbal Sophistry Confound The Qualities Of Different Minds, Nor Force Opposite Excellences Into A Union By All The Intolerance In The World. If We Have A Taste For Some One Precise Style Or Manner, We May Keep It To Ourselves And Let Others Have Theirs. If We Are More Catholic In Our Notions, And Want Variety Of Excellence And Beauty, It Is Spread Abroad For Us To Profusion In The Variety Of Books And In The Several Growth Of Men's Minds, Fettered By No Capricious Or Arbitrary Rules.

It Has Been The Resolution Of Mankind In All Ages Of The World. No People, No Age, Ever Threw Away The Fruits Of Past Wisdom, Or The Enjoyment Of Present Blessings, For Visionary Schemes Of Ideal Perfection. It Is The Knowledge Of The Past, The Actual Infliction Of The Present, That Has Produced All Changes, All Innovations, And All Improvements - Not (as Is Pretended) The Chimerical Anticipation Of Possible Advantages, But The Intolerable Pressure Of Long-established, Notorious, Aggravated, And Growing Abuses.

The More We Do, The More We Can Do; The More Busy We Are, The More Leisure We Have.

Leisure Activities

No Act Terminating In Itself Constitutes Greatness.

There Is A Softness And A Harmony In The Words And In The Thought Unparalleled. Of All Conceits It Is Surely The Most Classical. "i Count Only The Hours That Are Serene.".

In Exploring New And Doubtful Tracts Of Speculation, The Mind Strikes Out True And Original Views; As A Drop Of Water Hesitates At First What Direction It Will Take, But Afterwards Follows Its Own Course.

He Who Undervalues Himself Is Justly Undervalued By Others.

We Never Do Anything Well Till We Cease To Think About The Manner Of Doing It. This Is The Reason Why It Is So Difficult For Any But Natives To Speak A Language Correctly Or Idiomatically.

The Idea Of What The Public Will Think Prevents The Public From Ever Thinking At All, And Acts As A Spell On The Exercise Of Private Judgment.

Every Man Depends On The Quantity Of Sense, Wit, Or Good Manners He Brings Into Society For The Reception He Meets With In It.

To Be Capable Of Steady Friendship Or Lasting Love, Are The Two Greatest Proofs, Not Only Of Goodness Of Heart, But Of Strength Of Mind.

We Would Willingly, And Without Remorse, Sacrifice Not Only The Present Moment, But All The Interval (no Matter How Long) That Separates Us From Any Favorite Object.

One Truth Discovered Is Immortal, And Entitles Its Author To Be So; For, Like A New Substance In Nature, It Cannot Be Destroyed.

Religion Either Makes Men Wise And Virtuous, Or It Makes Them Set Up False Pretenses To Both.

When We Hear Complaints Of The Wretchedness Or Vanity Of Human Life, The Proper Answer To Them Would Be That There Is Hardly Any One Who At Some Point Or Other Has Not Been In Love. If We Consider The High Abstraction Of This Feeling, Its Depth, Its Purity, Its Voluptuous Refinement, Even In The Meanest Breast, How Sacred And How Sweet It Is, This Alone May Reconcile Us To The Lot Of Humanity. That Drop Of Balm Turns The Bitter Cup To A Delicious Nectar.

Greatness Is Great Power, Producing Great Effects. It Is Not Enough That A Man Has Great Power In Himself, He Must Shew It To All The World In A Way That Cannot Be Hid Or Gainsaid.

If We Wish To Know The Force Of Human Genius, We Should Read Shakespeare. If We Wish To See The Insignificance Of Human Learning, We May Study His Commentators.

No Man Can Thoroughly Master More Than One Art Or Science.

Nothing Is More Unjust Or Capricious Than Public Opinion.

Poverty Is The Test Of Civility And The Touchstone Of Friendship.

Satirists Gain The Applause Of Others Through Fear, Not Through Love.

It Is Not Fit That Every Man Should Travel; It Makes A Wise Man Better, And A Fool Worse.

We Grow Tired Of Ourselves, Much More Of Other People.

If The World Were Good For Nothing Else, It Is A Fine Subject For Speculation.

Books Are A World In Themselves, It Is True; But They Are Not The Only World. The World Itself Is A Volume Larger Than All The Libraries In It.

An Orator Can Hardly Get Beyond Commonplaces: If He Does He Gets Beyond His Hearers.

Public Speaking

The Greatest Grossness Sometimes Accompanies The Greatest Refinement, As A Natural Relief.

The Thing Is Plain. All That Men Really Understand, Is Confined To A Very Small Compass; To Their Daily Affairs And Experience; To What They Have An Opportunity To Know, And Motives To Study Or Practice. The Rest Is Affectation And Imposture.

Grace Is The Absence Of Everything That Indicates Pain Or Difficulty, Hesitation Or Incongruity.

The More You Do, The More You Can Do.

The Love Of Liberty Is The Love Of Others; The Love Of Power Is The Love Of Ourselves.

He Is A Hypocrite Who Professes What He Does Not Believe; Not He Who Does Not Practice All He Wishes Or Approves.

Virtue Steals, Like A Guilty Thing, Into The Secret Haunts Of Vice And Infamy, Clings To Their Devoted Victim, And Will Not Be Driven Quite Away. Nothing Can Destroy The Human Heart.

A Proud Man Is Satisfied With His Own Good Opinion, And Does Not Seek To Make Converts To It.

The Best Way To Make Ourselves Agreeable To Others Is By Seeming To Think Them So. If We Appear Fully Sensible Of Their Good Qualities They Will Not Complain Of The Want Of Them In Us.

Envy Is The Most Universal Passion. We Only Pride Ourselves On The Qualities We Possess, Or Think We Possess; But We Envy The Pretensions We Have, And Those Which We Have Not, And Do Not Even Wish For. We Envy The Greatest Qualities And Every Trifling Advantage. We Envy The Most Ridiculous Appearance Or Affectation Of Superiority. We Envy Folly And Conceit; Nay, We Go So Far As To Envy Whatever Confers Distinction Of Notoriety, Even Vice And Infamy.

Natural Affection Is A Prejudice; For Though We Have Cause To Love Our Nearest Connections Better Than Others, We Have No Reason To Think Them Better Than Others.

To Think Justly, We Must Understand What Others Mean. To Know The Value Of Our Thoughts, We Must Try Their Effect On Other Minds.

Horus Non Numero Nisi Serenas (i Count Only The Sunny Hours).

Literature, Like Nobility, Runs In The Blood.

Genius, Like Humanity, Rusts For Want Of Use.

He Who Lives Wisely To Himself And His Own Heart Looks At The Busy World Through The Loopholes Of Retreat, And Does Not Want To Mingle In The Fray.

The Measure Of Any Man's Virtue Is What He Would Do, If He Had Neither The Laws Nor Public Opinion, Nor Even His Own Prejudices, To Control Him.

Envy Is The Deformed And Distorted Offspring Of Egotism; And When We Reflect On The Strange And Disproportioned Character Of The Parent, We Cannot Wonder At The Perversity And Waywardness Of The Child.

Persons Without Education Certainly Do Not Want Either Acuteness Or Strength Of Mind In What Concerns Themselves, Or In Things Immediately Within Their Observation; But They Have No Power Of Abstraction, No General Standard Of Taste, Or Scale Of Opinion. They See Their Objects Always Near, And Never In The Horizon. Hence Arises That Egotism Which Has Been Remarked As The Characteristic Of Self-taught Men.

A King (as Such) Is Not A Great Man. He Has Great Power, But It Is Not His Own.

There Is Something Captivating In Spirit And Intrepidity, To Which, We Often Yield As To A Resistless Power; Nor Can He Reasonably Expect, The Confidence Of Others Who Too Apparently Distrusts Himself.

The Great Requisite For The Prosperous Management Of Ordinary Business Is The Want Of Imagination.

If I Have Not Read A Book Before, It Is, For All Intents And Purposes, New To Me Whether It Was Printed Yesterday Or Three Hundred Years Ago.

A Great Chessplayer Is Not A Great Man, For He Leaves The World As He Found It.

We Prefer A Person With Vivacity And High Spirits, Though Bordering Upon Insolence, To The Timid And Pusillanimous; We Are Fonder Of Wit Joined To Malice Than Of Dullness Without It.

Kings Ought Never To Be Seen Upon The Stage. In The Abstract, They Are Very Disagreeable Characters: It Is Only While Living That They Are 'the Best Of Kings'. It Is Their Power, Their Splendour, It Is The Apprehension Of The Personal Consequences Of Their Favour Or Their Hatred That Dazzles The Imagination And Suspends The Judgement Of Their Favourites Or Their Vassals; But Death Cancels The Bond Of Allegiance And Of Interest; And Seen As They Were, Their Power And Their Pretensions Look Monstrous And Ridiculous.

The Assumption Of Merit Is Easier, Less Embarrassing, And More Effectual Than The Actual Attainment Of It.

When You Find Out A Man's Ruling Passion, Beware Of Crossing Him In It.

I Like A Friend The Better For Having Faults That One Can Talk About.

When I Am In The Country, I Wish To Vegetate Like The Country.

When We Forget Old Friends, It Is A Sign We Have Forgotten Ourselves.

Some One Is Generally Sure To Be The Sufferer By A Joke.

By Retaliating Our Sufferings On The Heads Of Those We Love, We Get Rid Of A Present Uneasiness And Incur Lasting Remorse. With The Accomplishment Of Our Revenge Our Fondness Returns; So That We Feel The Injury We Have Done Them, Even More Than They Do.

A Life Of Action And Danger Moderates The Dread Of Death. It Not Only Gives Us Fortitude To Bear Pain, But Teaches Us At Every Step The Precarious Tenure On Which We Hold Our Present Being.

The Vain Man Makes A Merit Of Misfortune, And Triumphs In His Disgrace.

There Is Some Virtue In Almost Every Vice, Except Hypocrisy; And Even That, While It Is A Mockery Of Virtue, Is At The Same Time A Compliment To It.

One Of The Pleasantest Things In The World Is Going On A Journey; I Can Enjoy Society In A Room; But Out Of Doors, Nature Is Company Enough For Me. I Am Then Never Less Alone Than When Alone.

Learning Is Its Own Exceeding Great Reward.

To-day Kings, To-marrow Beggars, It Is Only When They Are Themselves That They Are Nothing.

A Person Who Talks With Equal Vivacity On Every Subject, Excites No Interest In Any. Repose Is As Necessary In Conversation As In A Picture.

Mankind Are So Ready To Bestow Their Admiration On The Dead, Because The Latter Do Not Hear It, Or Because It Gives No Pleasure To The Objects Of It. Even Fame Is The Offspring Of Envy.

A Felon Could Plead "benefit Of Clergy" And Be Saved By [reading Aloud] What Was Aptly Enough Termed The "neck Verse", Which Was Very Usually The Miserere Mei Of Psalm 51.

The More A Man Writes, The More He Can Write.

A Man Knows His Companion In A Long Journey And A Little Inn.

A Knave Thinks Himself A Fool, All The Time He Is Not Making A Fool Of Some Other Person.

To Write A Genuine Familiar Or Truly English Style Is To Write As Anyone Would Speak In Common Conversation, Who Had A Thorough Command And Choice Of Words, Or Who Could Discourse With Ease, Force, And Perspicuity, Setting Aside All Pedantic And Oratorical Flourishes.

Man Is The Only Animal That Laughs And Weeps; For He Is The Only Animal That Is Struck With The Difference Between What Things Are, And What They Ought To Be.

Belief Is With Them Mechanical, Voluntary: They Believe What They Are Paid For - They Swear To That Which Turns To Account. Do You Suppose, That After Years Spent In This Manner, They Have Any Feeling Left Answering To The Difference Between Truth And Falsehood?

People Do Not Seem To Talk For The Sake Of Expressing Their Opinions, But To Maintain An Opinion For The Sake Of Talking.

Those Who Wish To Forget Painful Thoughts Do Well To Absent Themselves For A While From, The Ties And Objects That Recall Them; But We Can Be Said Only To Fulfill Our Destiny In The Place That Gave Us Birth.

In Public Speaking, We Must Appeal Either To The Prejudices Of Others, Or To The Love Of Truth And Justice. If We Think Merely Of Displaying Our Own Ability, We Shall Ruin Every Cause We Undertake.

Sincerity Has To Do With The Connexion Between Our Words And Thoughts, And Not Between Our Beliefs And Actions.

The Pleasure Of Hating, Like A Poisonous Mineral, Eats Into The Heart Of Religion, And Turns It To Ranking Spleen And Bigotry; It Makes Patriotism An Excuse For Carrying Fire, Pestilence, And Famine Into Other Lands: It Leaves To Virtue Nothing But The Spirit Of Censoriousness.

We Find Many Things To Which The Prohibition Of Them Constitutes The Only Temptation.

Death Cancels Everything But Truth; And Strips A Man Of Everything But Genius And Virtue. It Is A Sort Of Natural Canonization.

Men Are In Numberless Instances Qualified For Certain Things, For No Other Reason Than Because They Are Qualified For Nothing Else.

As Is Our Confidence, So Is Our Capacity.

Positive Attitude

Poetry Is All That Is Worth Remembering In Life.

This Is The Test And Triumph Of Originality, Not To Show Us What Has Never Been, And What We May Therefore Very Easily Never Have Dreamt Of, But To Point Out To Us What Is Before Our Eyes And Under Our Feet, Though We Have Had No Suspicion Of Its Existence, For Want Of Sufficient Strength Of Intuition, Of Determined Grasp Of Mind To Seize And Retain It.

A Nickname Is The Hardest Stone That The Devil Can Throw At A Man.

None But Those Who Are Happy In Themselves Can Make Others So.

I Like A Person Who Knows His Own Mind And Sticks To It; Who Sees At Once What, In Given Circumstances, Is To Be Done, And Does It.

Every Man, In His Own Opinion, Forms An Exception To The Ordinary Rules Of Morality.

Happy Are They Who Live In The Dream Of Their Own Existence, And See All Things In The Light Of Their Own Minds; Who Walk By Faith And Hope; To Whom The Guiding Star Of Their Youth Still Shines From Afar, And Into Whom The Spirit Of The World Has Not Entered! They Have Not Been "hurt By The Archers", Nor Has The Iron Entered Their Souls. The World Has No Hand On Them.

Habit In Most Cases Hardens And Encrusts By Taking Away The Keener Edge Of Our Sensations: But Does It Not In Others Quicken And Refine, By Giving A Mechanical Facility And By Engrafting An Acquired Sense?

Love And Joy Are Twins Or Born Of Each Other.

The Only Vice That Cannot Be Forgiven Is Hypocrisy. The Repentance Of A Hypocrite Is Itself Hypocrisy.

Those Are Ever The Most Ready To Do Justice To Others, Who Feel That The World Has Done Them Justice.

The Vices Are Never So Well Employed As In Combating One Another.

We Do Not See Nature With Our Eyes, But With Our Understandings And Our Hearts.

Those Who Have The Largest Hearts Have The Soundest Understandings; And They Are The Truest Philosophers Who Can Forget Themselves.

Pride Goes Before A Fall, They Say, And Yet We Often Find, The Folks Who Throw All Pride Away Most Often Fall Behind.

I'm Not Smart, But I Like To Observe. Millions Saw The Apple Fall, But Newton Was The One Who Asked Why.

Tears May Be Considered As The Natural And Involuntary Resource Of The Mind Overcome By Some Sudden And Violent Emotion, Before Ithas Had Time To Reconcile Its Feelings To The Change In Circumstances: While Laughter May Be Defined To Be The Same Sort Of Convulsive And Involuntary Movement, Occasioned By Mere Sur Prise Or Contrast (in The Absence Of Any More Serious Emotion), Before It Has Time To Reconcile Its Belief To Contradictory Appearances.

Humanity Is To Be Met With In A Den Of Robbers.

Anyone Is To Be Pitied Who Has Just Sense Enough To Perceive His Deficiencies.

The Affected Modesty Of Most Women Is A Decoy For The Generous, The Delicate, And Unsuspecting; While The Artful, The Bold, And Unfeeling Either See Or Break Through Its Slender Disguises.

Want Of Principle Is Power. Truth And Honesty Set A Limit To Our Efforts, Which Impudence And Hypocrisy Easily Overleap.

The Most Learned Are Often The Most Narrow Minded.

Open Mindedness

Asleep, Nobody Is A Hypocrite

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