Good manners are the settled medium of social, as specie is of commercial, life; returns are equally expected for both |
Great merit, or great failings, will make you respected or despised; but trifles, little attentions, mere nothings, either done or neglected, will make you either liked or disliked in the general run of the world. |
He makes people pleased with him by making them first pleased with themselves. |
Hear one side and you will be in the dark. Hear both and all will be clear. |
History is only a confused heap of facts |
Honest error is to be pitied, not ridiculed. |
Horse-play, romping, frequent and loud fits of laughter, jokes, and indiscriminate familiarity, will sink both merit and knowledge into a degree of contempt. They compose at most a merry fellow; and a merry fellow was never yet a respectable man. |
I am convinced that a light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning, have sometimes made a hero of the same man, who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and rainy morning, would have proved a coward. |
I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has ever heard me laugh. |
I am very sure that any man of common understanding may, by culture, care, attention, and labor, make himself what- ever he pleases, except a great poet. |
I find, by experience, that the mind and the body are more than married, for they are most intimately united; and when one suffers, the other sympathizes. |
I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. |
I knew once a very covetous, sordid fellow [perhaps William Lowndes], who used to say, `Take care of the pence, for the pounds will take care of themselves.' |
I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive. |
I recommend you to take care of the minutes, for the hours will take care of themselves. |