Quotes
Quotes to inspire and reflect
Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging … Shakespeare wanted art.
How far thou didst our Lyly outshine,
Soul of the Age!
In small proportions we just beauty see,
Reader, look
Drink to me only with thine eyes,
You have a gift, sir, (thank your education),
This figure that thou here seest put,
Come, my Celia, let us prove,
Suns, that set, may rise again;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me,
Still to be neat, still to be drest,
Jealousy is all the fun you think they had.
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is.
Sex and taxes are in many ways the same. Tax does to cash what males do to genes. It dispenses assets among the population as a whole. Sex, not death, is the great leveller.
City of God, how broad and far.
Of music Dr Johnson used to say that it was the only sensual pleasure without vice.
A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.
Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.
Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible.
Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.
It might as well be said ‘Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.’
Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.
The black dog I hope always to resist, and in time to drive, though I am deprived of almost all those that used to help me.
If a man were to go by chance at the same time with Burke under a shed, to shun a shower, he would say—‘this is an extraordinary man.’
Sir, there is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.
When I observed he was a fine cat, saying,
How few of his friends’ houses would a man choose to be at when he is sick.
There is a wicked inclination in most people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing; but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, ‘His memory is going.’
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Always, Sir, set a high value on spontaneous kindness. He whose inclination prompts him to cultivate your friendship of his own accord, will love you more than one whom you have been at pains to attach to you.
Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.
We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich, beyond the dreams of avarice.
No man was more foolish when he had not a pen in his hand, or more wise when he had.
This merriment of parsons is mighty offensive.
They are forced plants, raised in a hot-bed; and they are poor plants; they are but cucumbers after all.
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.
Worth seeing, yes; but not worth going to see.
Claret is the liquor for boys; port, for men; but he who aspires to be a hero (smiling) must drink brandy.
Were it not for imagination, Sir, a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a Duchess.
Sir, the insolence of wealth will creep out.
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.
Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Johnson had said that he could repeat a complete chapter of ‘The Natural History of Iceland’, from the Danish of Horrebow, the whole of which was exactly thus:—‘ CHAP. Lxxii. Concerning snakes. There are no snakes to be met with throughout the whole island.’