The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it m...
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, w...
A am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
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.
There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as...
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
It is the just doom of laziness and a gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquillity.
A man must carry knowledge with him if he would bring home knowledge.
It is foolish to make experiments upon the constancy of a friend as upon the chastity of a wife.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
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.
The world is seldom what it seems to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
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.
Silence propagates itself and the longer talk has been suspended the more difficult it is to find anything to say.
Prudence keeps life safe but does not often make it happy.