 How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians. |
| Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. |
| Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel. |
| Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent. |
| Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations. |
| Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school. |
| The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well. |
| The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon. |
| Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is. |
| This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. |
| Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs. |
| I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule. |
| The wisest prophets make sure of the event first. |
| It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink. |
| By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense. |
| Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice. |
| I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing. |
| We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second. |
| Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony. |
| The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel. |
