139 quotes
The true barbarian is he who thinks every thing barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.
Political Essays (1819)
The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.
Those who aim at faultless regularity will only produce mediocrity, and no one ever approaches perfection except by stealth, and unknown to themselves.
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
Lectures on the English Comic Writers (1819)
Man is a make-believe animal — he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.
Notes of a Journey through France and Italy (1824)
He who comes up to his own idea of greatness, must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.
The Plain Speaker (1826)
One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
The Spirit of the Age (1825)
Lord Byron makes man after his own image, woman after his own heart; the one is a capricious tyrant, the other a yielding slave.
You know more of a road by having travelled it than by all the conjectures and descriptions in the world.
Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
The mind of man is like a clock that is always running down, and requires to be as constantly wound up.
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)
A scholar is like a book written in a dead language — it is not every one that can read in it.
Gracefulness has been defined to be the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
The soul of the journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.
Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.
It is hard for any one to be an honest politician who is not born and bred a Dissenter.
Political Essays (1819)
Those who make their dress a principal part of themselves, will, in general, become of no more value than their dress.
Political Essays (1819)
Grace has been defined the outward expression of the inward harmony of the soul.
The Round Table (1815)