139 quotes
Liberty is the only true riches.
Defoe says, that there were a hundred thousand stout country-fellows in his time ready to fight to the death against popery, without knowing whether popery was a man or a horse.
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)
We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Poetry is the universal language which the heart holds with nature and itself. He who has a contempt for poetry, cannot have much respect for himself, or for anything else.
Lectures on the English Poets (1818)
We often forget our dreams so speedily: if we cannot catch them as they are passing out at the door, we never set eyes on them again.
The Plain Speaker (1826)
Zeal will do more than knowledge.
The Plain Speaker (1826)
The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savors less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols — it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.
The slaves of power mind the cause they have to serve, because their own interest is concerned; but the friends of liberty always sacrifice their cause, which is only the cause of humanity, to their own spleen, vanity, and self-opinion.
The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.
Prejudice is the child of ignorance…
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)
No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they were aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.
Characteristics, in the manner of Rochefoucauld's Maxims (1823)
One said a tooth drawer was a kind of unconscionable trade, because his trade was nothing else but to take away those things whereby every man gets his living.
I am no politician, and still less can I be said to be a party-man : I have a hatred of tyranny, and a contempt for its tools; and this feeling I have expressed as often and as strongly as I could.
Political Essays (1819)
The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity; of Spenser, remoteness; of Milton, elevation; of Shakespeare, every thing.
Lectures on the English Poets (1818)
The objects that we have known in better days are the main props that sustain the weight of our affections, and give us strength to await our future lot.
If a person has no delicacy, he has you in his power, for you necessarily feel some towards him; and since he will take no denial, you must comply with his peremptory demands, or send for a constable, which out of respect for his character you will not do.
Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for — they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?
We are not hypocrites in our sleep.
The Plain Speaker (1826)
Without the aid of prejudice and custom, I should not be able to find my way across the room; nor know how to conduct myself in any circumstances, nor what to feel in any relation of life.
Men and Manners: Sketches and Essays (1852)