We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver’s watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.
Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical.
Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore.
Yet, Malice never was his Aim;He lash’d the Vice but spar’d the Name. No individual could resent,Where thousands equally were meant. His Satry points at no Defect, But what all Mortals may correct…Verses on the death of Dr Swift
As learnèd commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew.
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking.
For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it.
When the world has once begun to use us ill it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Dignity high station or great riches are in some sort necessary to old men in order to keep the younger at a distance who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.
Zsa Zsa Gabor when asked which of the Gabor women was the oldest said “She’ll never admit it but I believe it is Mama.” When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
She looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.
The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little.
She wears her clothes as if they were thrown on her with a pitchfork.
We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong which is but saying … that he is wiser today than yesterday.
There is nothing in this world constant but inconstancy.
They say fingers were made before forks and hands before knives.
111 company is like a dog who dirts those most whom he loves best.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Lord! I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
When the world has once begun to use us ill and afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony as men do to a whore.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company.
Possession they say is eleven points of the law.
Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery’s the food of fools – Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.
I always love to begin a journey on Sundays because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land or by water.
I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs.
When I am reading a book whether wise or silly it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly.
Very few men properly speaking live at present but are providing to live another time.
Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad.
When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil’s leavings.
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Most sorts of diversion in men children and other animals are in imitation of fighting.
Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
Where there are large powers with little ambition… nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes.
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.