All Quotes

"The charge is prepared; the lawyers are met; The judges all ranged (a terrible show!) I go, undismay'd.—For death is a debt, A debt on demand.—So take what I owe."

"Every fool knoweth that hatreds are the cinders of affection."

"No man is wise or safe, but he that is honest."

"If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy Love.But fading flowers in every field, To winter floods their treasures yield; A honey'd tongue, a heart of gall, Is Fancy's spring, but Sorrow's fall."

"Go, Soul, the body’s guest, Upon a thankless arrant: Fear not to touch the best; The truth shall be thy warrant: Go, since I needs must die, And give the world the lie.Say to the court, it glows. And shines like rotten wood; Say to the church, it shows What’s good, and doth no good: If church and court reply, Then give them both the lie."

"So when thou hast, as I Commanded thee, done blabbing — Although to give the lie Deserves no less than stabbing — Stab at thee he that will, No stab the soul can kill."

"[History] hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over."

"Whosoever, in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may happily strike out his teeth."

"O eloquent, just, and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered it all over with these two narrow words, Hic jacet [Here lies]!"

"Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly."

"The ideal man bears the accidents of life With dignity and grace, the best of circumstances."

"The soul, secured in her existence, smiles At the drawn dagger, and defies its point."

"What means this heaviness that hangs upon me? This lethargy that creeps through all my senses? Nature, oppress'd and harrass'd out with care, Sinks down to rest."

"Sweet are the slumbers of the virtuous man."

"From hence, let fierce contending nations know, What dire effects from civil discord flow."

"There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice."

"To be perfectly just is an attribute in the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man."

"Justice discards party, friendship, kindred, and is therefore always represented as blind."

"Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another."

"When I read the rules of criticism, I immediately inquire after the works of the author who has written them, and by that means discover what it is he likes in a composition."

"Courage that grows from constitution very often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it, and when it is only a kind of instinct in the Soul breaks out on all occasions without judgment or discretion. That courage which proceeds from the sense of our duty, and from the fear of offending Him that made us, acts always in a uniform manner, and according to the dictates of right reason."

"Blessings may appear under the shape of pains, losses and disappointments; but let him have patience, and he will see them in their proper figures."

"A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves a constant ease and serenity within us, and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can possibly befall us."

"The sense of honour is of so fine and delicate a nature, that it is only to be met with in minds which are naturally noble, or in such as have been cultivated by good examples, or a refined education."

"Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands."

"Gifts and alms are the expressions, not the essence, of this virtue."

"If I can any way contribute to the diversion or improvement of the country in which I live, I shall leave it, when I am summoned out of it, with the secret satisfaction of thinking that I have not lived in vain."

"Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than as one of the species."

"To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude."

"I would... earnestly advise them for their good to order this paper to be punctually served up, and to be looked upon as a part of the tea equipage."

"I shall endeavor to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality."

"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions."

"That nothing is capable of being well set to Musick, that is not Nonsense."

"The Fear of Death often proves Mortal, and sets People on Methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them."

"It is indeed very possible, that the Persons we laugh at may in the main of their Characters be much wiser Men than our selves; but if they would have us laugh at them, they must fall short of us in those Respects which stir up this Passion."

"In all thy humours, whether grave or mellow, Thou 'rt such a touchy, testy, pleasant fellow, Hast so much wit and mirth and spleen about thee, There is no living with thee, nor without thee."

"There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol."

"A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts."

"Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors."

"There is not so variable a thing in Nature as a lady's head-dress."

""Censure," says a late ingenious author, "is the tax a man plays for being eminent." It is a folly for an eminent man to think of escaping it, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution. There is no defense against reproach but obscurity; it is a kind of comitant to greatness, as satires and invectives were an essential part of a Roman triumph."

"If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve. In a word, the man in a high post is never regarded with an indifferent eye, but always considered as a friend or an enemy. For this reason persons in great stations have seldom their true characters drawn till several years after their deaths. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunity of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it. It is therefore the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions."

"Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week."

"Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness."

"When I consider the Question, Whether there are such Persons in the World as those we call Witches? my Mind is divided between the two opposite Opinions; or rather (to speak my Thoughts freely) I believe in general that there is, and has been such a thing as Witchcraft; but at the same time can give no Credit to any Particular Instance of it."

"Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass."

"The most violent appetites in all creatures are lust and hunger: the first is a perpetual call upon them to propogate their kind; the latter to preserve themselves."

"Much might be said on both sides."

"A man's first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart; his next to escape the censures of the world: if the last interferes with the former, it ought to be entirely neglected; but otherwise there cannot be a greater satisfaction to an honest mind, than to see those approbations which it gives itself seconded by the applauses of the public: a man is more sure of his conduct, when the verdict which he passes upon his own behaviour is thus warranted and confirmed by the opinion of all that know him."

"Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer."