All Quotes

"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for in the course of things, men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince the town or country profligate, by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, health, and advantage, their infidelity would soon drop off: This I confess is no easy task, because it is almost in a literal sense, to fight with beasts."

"If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel."

"So weak thou art, that fools thy power despise; And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise."

"For, in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery: but in fact, eleven men well armed will certainly subdue one single man in his shirt."

"Libertas et natale solum: Fine words! I wonder where you stole 'em."

"A set of phrases learnt by rote; A passion for a scarlet coat; When at a play to laugh, or cry, Yet cannot tell the reason why: Never to hold her tongue a minute; While all she prates has nothing in it."

"For conversation well endued; She calls it witty to be rude; And, placing raillery in railing, Will tell aloud your greatest failing."

"Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, And with false flitting shapes our minds delude … are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain."

"This evil fortune, which generally attends extraordinary men in the management of great affairs, has been imputed to divers causes, that need not be here set down, when so obvious a one occurs, if what a certain writer observes be true, that when a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

"Not die here in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole."

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

"A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter."

"Yet malice never was his aim; He lashed the vice but spared the name. No individual could resent, Where thousands equally were meant. His satire points at no defect But what all mortals may correct; For he abhorred that senseless tribe Who call it humor when they gibe."

"Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible."

"Then gave him some familiar Thumps, A College Joke to cure the Dumps."

"Conversation is but carving! Give no more to every guest Than he's able to digest. Give him always of the prime, And but little at a time. Carve to all but just enough, Let them neither starve nor stuff, And that you may have your due, Let your neighbor carve for you."

"Under an oak, in stormy weather, I joined this rogue and whore together; And none but he who rules the thunder Can put this rogue and whore asunder."

"Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company."

"Pedantry is properly the over-rating of any kind of knowledge we pretend to."

"Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners."

"I can discover no political evil in suffering bullies, sharpers, and rakes, to rid the world of each other by a method of their own; where the law hath not been able to find an expedient."

"Fingers were made before forks, and hands before knives."

"Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest."

"It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind."

"Violent zeal for truth hath an hundred to one odds to be either petulancy, ambition, or pride."

"I shall be like that tree; I shall die from the top."

"Reason is a very light rider and easily shook off."

"Hail fellow, well met."

"I 've often wish'd that I had clear, For life, six hundred pounds a year; A handsome house to lodge a friend; A river at my garden's end; A terrace walk, and half a rood Of land set out to plant a wood."

"How we apples swim!"

"I have employed my time, besides ditching, in finishing, correcting, amending, and transcribing my Travels, in four parts complete, newly augmented, and intended for the press, when the world shall deserve them, or rather when a printer shall be found brave enough to venture his ears. I like the scheme of our meeting after distresses and dispersions; but the chief end I propose to myself in all my labours is to vex the world rather than divert it; and if I could compass that design, without hurting my own person or fortune, I would be the most indefatigable writer you have ever seen, without reading."

"It is a maxim, that those to whom everybody allows the second place have an undoubted title to the first."

"Seamen have a custom, when they meet a whale, to fling him out an empty tub by way of amusement, to divert him from laying violent hands upon the ship."

"There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either of wit or sublime."

"Bread is the staff of life."

"I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells - a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there: and often when there is nothing in the world at the bottom besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and a-half under-ground, it shall pass, however, for wondrous deep upon no wiser reason than because it is wondrous dark"

"Books, the children of the brain."

"As boys do sparrows, with flinging salt upon their tails."

"He made it a part of his religion never to say grace to his meat."

"Laws are like Cobwebs which may catch small Flies, but let Wasps and Hornets break through. But in Oratory the greatest Art is to hide Art."

"ALL Rivers go to the Sea, but none return from it. Xerxes wept when he beheld his Army, to consider that in less than a Hundred Years they would be all Dead. Anacreon was' Choakt with a Grape-stone, and violent Joy Kills as well as violent Grief. There is nothing in this World constant but Inconstancy; yet Plato thought that if Virtue would appear to the World in her own native Dress, all Men would be Enamoured with her. But now since Interest governs the World, and Men neglect the Golden Mean, Jupiter himself, if he came on the Earth would be Despised, unless it were as he did to Danae in a Golden Shower. For Men nowadays Worship the Rising Sun, and not the Setting."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

"Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old."

"A nice man is a man of nasty ideas."

"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly: that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage."

"The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."

"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."

"The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former."

"Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince others the more, as he appears convinced himself."

"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions, and consequently of no use to a good king or a good ministry; for which reason Courts are so overrun with politics."