That friendship may be at once fond and lasting there must not only be equal virtue on each part but virtue of the same kind not only the same end must be proposed but the same means must be appro...
Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us.
None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing when we have made it the next wish is to change again.
A lexicographer a writer of dictionaries a harmless drudge.
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpresse...
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
The present time is seldom able to fill desire or imagination with immediate enjoyment and we are forced to supply its deficiencies by recollection or anticipation.
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth and every other man has a right to knock him down for it.
The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth.
The true strong and sound mind is the mind that can embrace equally great things and small.
Is not a patron one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water and when he has reached ground encumbers him with help?
The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef.
It is foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the chastity of a wife.
O how vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base uncomely things it makes men do.
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Dictionaries are like watches. The worst is better than none at all and even the best cannot be expected to run quite true.
(Adversity is) the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself being especially free from admirers then.
our triumphant age of plenty is riddled with darker feelings of doubt, cynicism, distrust, boredom and a strange kind of emptiness
Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing when we have made it, the next wish is to change again.