This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.
Horace Walpole
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.
In all science, error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.
The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.
The wisest prophets make sure of the event first.
When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
Pictures may serve as helps to religion but are only an appendix to idolatry, for the people must be taught to believe in false gods and in the power of saints before they will learn to worship their images.
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.
It was easier to conquer it than to know what to do with it.
It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
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.
Men are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent.
The Methodists love your big sinners, as proper subjects to work upon.
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.
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
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.
I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.
He would be a very absurd legislator who should pretend to set bounds to his country's welfare, lest it should perish by knowing no bounds.
The establishment of a society for the encouragement of arts will produce great benefits before they are perverted to mischiefs.
