No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.

Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

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.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

There are goods so opposed that we cannot seize both, but, by too much prudence, may pass between them at too great a distance to reach either.

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.

Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see.

He that undervalues himself will undervalue others, and he that undervalues others will oppress them.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.

Paradise Lost is a book that, once put down, is very hard to pick up again.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen.

Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it; for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.

The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.