 Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy. |
| Words are but the signs of ideas. |
| Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see. |
| 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. |
| Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself. |
| There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either. |
| I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world. |
| Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world. |
| If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance. |
| Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test. |
| Of the blessings set before you make your choice, and be content. |
| The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery. |
| Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle. |
| No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company. |
| You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword. |
| To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself. |
| I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him. |
| So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other. |
| A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him. |
| You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you. |
