-
True friendship is like sound health, the value of it is seldom known until it be lost.
Best?
-
Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
Best?
-
Love is an alliance of friendship and animalism; if the former predominates it is passion exalted and refined; if the latter, gross and sensual.
Best?
-
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision; and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
Best?
-
Anguish of mind has driven thousands to suicide; anguish of body, none. This proves that the health of the mind is of far more consequence to our happiness, than the health of the body, although both are deserving of much more attention than either of them receive.
Best?
-
Times of general calamity and confusion create great minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storms.
Best?
-
When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
Best?
-
The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility.
Best?
-
We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.
Best?
-
If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; If you would know, and not be known, live in a city.
Best?
-
Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Best?
-
To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than how he loses it; for when we fail, our pride supports; when we succeed; it betrays us.
Best?
-
No company is preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.
Best?
-
He that thinks himself the wisest is generally the least so.
Best?
-
It is only when the rich are sick that they fully feel the impotence of wealth.
Best?
-
The slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient if it produce amendment, and the greatest insufficient if it do not.
Best?
-
Two things, well considered, would prevent many quarrels; first to have it well ascertained whether we are not disputing about terms rather than things; and secondly, to examine whether that on which we differ in worth contending about.
Best?
-
We ought not be over anxious to encourage innovation, in case of doubtful improvement, for an old system must ever have two advantages over a new one; it is established and it is understood.
Best?
-
There is a diabolical trio existing in the natural man, implacable, inextinguishable, co-operative and consentaneous, pride, envy, and hate; pride that makes us fancy we deserve all the goods that others possess; envy that some should be admired while we are overlooked; and hate, because all that is bestowed on others, diminishes the sum we think due to ourselves.
Best?
-
There is this paradox in pride - it makes some men ridiculous, but prevents others from becoming so.
Best?
-
To know the pains of power, we must go to those who have it; to know its pleasures, we must go to those who are seeking it. The pains of power are real; its pleasures imaginary.
Best?
-
Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.
Best?
-
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
Best?
-
Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us, as those that are not wholly wrong; as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right.
Best?
-
The celebrated Galen said that employment was nature's physician. It is indeed so important to happiness that indolence is justly considered the parent of misery.
Best?
