By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

Men are often capable of greater things than they perform - They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

Alexander at the head of the world never tasted the true pleasure that boys of his own age have enjoyed at the head of a school.

Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.

Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.

How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.

It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.

I do not admire politicians; but when they are excellent in their way, one cannot help allowing them their due.

I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.

It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.

Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is acting a lie.

This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.

The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.

Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.

The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.

I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.

When people will not weed their own minds they are apt to be overrun by nettles.

The world is a tragedy to those who feel but a comedy to those who think.

The curse of modern times is that almost everything does create controversy.

By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses one misses more nonsense than sense.

A tragedy can never suffer by delay a comedy may because the allusions or the manners represented in it maybe temporary.

Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years . . . They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Perhaps those, who, trembling most, maintain a dignity in their fate, are the bravest: resolution on reflection is real courage.

Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of Serendip': as their Highnesses traveled, they were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of.

Let schoolmasters puzzle their brain, With grammar, and nonsense, and learning, Good liquor, I stoutly maintain, Gives genius a better discerning.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

In a society in which equality is a fact, not merely a word, words of racial or sexual assault and humiliation will be nonsense syllables.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.

The way I see it is that all the ol' guff about being Irish is a kind of nonsense. I mean, I couldn't be anything else no matter what I tried to be. I couldn't be Chinese or Japanese.

On the other hand, all kinds of adventurous schemes to add security checkpoints to subway and bus systems have been circulating since the London attacks. This is nonsense. No one can guaranty 100 percent security.

I'm tired of all this nonsense about beauty being skin deep. That's deep enough. What do you want, an adorable pancreas?

Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

Sometimes the world seems like a big hole. You spend all your life shouting down it and all you hear are echoes of some idiot yelling nonsense down a hole.

Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.