Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Jonathan Swift

Abstracts, abridgments, summaries, etc., have the same use with burning glasses—to collect the diffused rays of wit and learning in authors, and make them point with warmth and quickness upon the reader’s imagination.

Considering the usual motives of human actions, which are pleasure, profit, and ambition, I cannot yet comprehend how these persons find their account in any of the three.

The nearer I find myself verging to that period of life which is to be labour and sorrow, the more I prop myself upon those few supports that are left.

The troubles of age were intended … to wean us gradually from our fondness of life the nearer we approach to the end.

The poor beggar hath a just demand of an alms from the rich man, who is guilty of fraud, injustice, and oppression if he does not afford relief according to his abilities.

The ambitious, the covetous, the superficial, and the ill-designing are apt to be bold and forward.

If your arguments be rational, offer them in as moving a manner as the nature of the subject will admit; but beware of letting the pathetic part swallow up the rational.

Astrologers with an old paltry cant, and a few pot-hooks for planets, to amuse the vulgar, have too long been suffered to abuse the world.

I know the learned think of the art of astrology that the stars do not force the actions or wills of men.

I never knew any man cured of inattention.

Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what omissions he most laments.

By the time that an author hath written out a book, he and his readers are become old acquaintants.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

No translation our own country ever yet produced hath come up to that of the Old and New Testament; and I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings; the which is owing to the simplicity that runs through the whole.

Books give the same turn to our thoughts that company does to our conversation, without loading our memories, or making us even sensible of the change.

The collectors only consider, the greater fame a writer is in possession of, the more trash he may bear to have tacked to him.

It is the editor’s interest to insert what the author’s judgment had rejected; and care is taken to intersperse these additions, so that scarce any book can be bought without purchasing something unworthy of the author.

The design is to avoid the imputation of pedantry, to show that they understand men and manners, and have not been poring upon old unfashionable books.

The affectation of some late authors to introduce and multiply cant words is the most ruinous corruption in any language.

The first springs of great events, like those of great rivers, are often mean and little.

It is some commendation that we have avoided to characterize any person without long experience.

It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.

If things were once in this train,—if virtue were established as necessary to reputation, and vice not only loaded with infamy, but made the infallible ruin of all men’s pretensions,—our duty would take root in our nature.

What can be a greater honour than to be chosen one of the stewards and dispensers of God’s bounty to mankind? What can give a generous spirit more complacency than to consider that great numbers owe to him, under God, their subsistence, and the good conduct of their lives?

Such a man, truly wise, creams off nature, leaving the sour and the dregs for philosophy and reason to lap up.

The clergy prevent themselves from doing much service to religion by affecting so much to converse with each other, and caring so little to mingle with the laity.

A divine dares hardly show his person among the gentlemen; or, if he fall into such company, he is in continual apprehension that some pert man of pleasure should break an unmannerly jest, and render him ridiculous.

The clergy’s business lies among the laity; nor is there a more effectual way to forward the salvation of men’s souls than for spiritual persons to make themselves as agreeable as they can in the conversations of the world.

If the clergy would a little study the arts of conversation, they might be welcome at every party where there was the least regard for politeness or good sense.

Neither is it rare to observe among excellent and learned divines a certain ungracious manner or an unhappy tone of voice, which they never have been able to shake off.

It seems to be in the power of a reasonable clergyman to make the most ignorant man comprehend his duty.

I cannot forbear warning you against endeavoring at wit in your sermons; because many of your calling have made themselves ridiculous by attempting it.

As a man is known by his company, so a man’s company may be known by his manner of expressing himself.

No word more frequently in the mouths of men than conscience; and the meaning of it is, in some measure, understood: however, it is a word extremely abused by many who apply other meanings to it which God Almighty never intended.

Conscience signifies that knowledge which a man hath of his own thoughts and actions; and because if a man judgeth fairly of his actions by comparing them with the law of God, his mind will approve or condemn him, this knowledge or conscience may be both an accuser and a judge.

It is very unfair in any writer to employ ignorance and malice together; because it gives his answerer double work.

One of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish we had rather left unsaid: nor can there anything be well more contrary to the ends for which people meet together, than to part unsatisfied with each other or themselves.

Old threadbare phrases will often make you go out of your way to find and apply them, and are nauseous to rational hearers.

One can revive a languishing conversation by a sudden surprising sentence; another is more dexterous in seconding; a third can fill the gap with laughing.

There is no point wherein I have so much laboured as that of improving and polishing all parts of conversation between persons of quality.

The only invention of late years which hath contributed towards politeness in discourse is that of abbreviating, or reducing words of many syllables into one by lopping off the rest.

Since the ladies have been left out of all meetings except parties of play, our conversation hath degenerated.

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 malignant deity Criticism dwelt on the top of a snowy mountain in Nova Zembla: Momus found her extended in her den upon the spoils of numberless volumes half devoured. At her right hand sat Ignorance, her father and husband, blind with age; at her left, Pride, her mother, dressing her up in the scraps of paper herself had torn. There was Opinion, her sister, light of foot, hoodwinked and headstrong, yet giddy and perpetually turning. About her played her children, Noise and Impudence, Dulness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill Manners.

Cunning men can be guilty of a thousand injustices without being discovered; or at least without being punished.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

There is no quality so contrary to any nature which one cannot affect, and put on upon occasion, in order to serve an interest.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

Whoever argues in defence of absolute power in a single person, though he offers the old plausible plea that it is his opinion, which he cannot help unless he be convinced, ought to be treated as the common enemy of mankind.

When we desire anything, our minds run wholly on the good circumstances of it; when ’tis obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

There is no talent so useful towards rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than discretion, a species of lower prudence.

Men of wit, learning, and virtue might strike out every offensive or unbecoming passage from plays.

Employ their wit and humour in choosing and matching of patterns and colours.

How naturally do you apply your hands to each other’s lappets, ruffles, and mantuas!

A wise man who does not assist with his counsels, a rich man with his charity, and a poor man with his labour, are perfect nuisances in a commonwealth.

All nations have agreed in the necessity of a strict education which consisted in the observance of moral duties.

You cannot but have observed what a violent run there is among … weak people against university education.

Those of better fortune, not making learning their maintenance, take degrees with little improvement.

It is allowed on all hands that the people of England are more corrupt in their morals than any other nation this day under the sun.

Our mother-tongue, which truly of itself is both full enough for prose and stately enough for verse, hath long time been counted most bare and barren of both; which default when as some endeavoured to salve and cure, they patched up the holes with rags from other languages.

The same defect of heat which gives a fierceness; to our natures may contribute to that roughness of our language which bears some analogy to the harsh fruit of colder countries.

The Swedes, Danes, Germans, and Dutch attain to the pronunciation of our words with ease, because our syllables resemble theirs in roughness and frequency of consonants.

The fame of our writers is confined to these two islands, and it is hard if it should be limited in time as well as place by the perpetual variations of our speech.

Nothing would be of greater use towards the improvement of knowledge and politeness than some effectual method for correcting, enlarging, and ascertaining our language.

Our language is extremely imperfect, and in many instances it offends against every part of grammar.

Another cause which hath maimed our language is a foolish opinion that we ought to spell exactly as we speak.

From the civil war to this time I doubt whether the corruptions in our language have not equalled its refinements.

The English tongue if refined to a certain standard might perhaps be fixed forever.

What I have most at heart is, that some method should be thought on for ascertaining and fixing our language.

If you will not care to settle our language and put it into a state of continuance, your memory shall not be preserved above an hundred years, further than by imperfect tradition.

If all these were exemplary in the conduct of their lives, religion would receive a mighty encouragement.

A regard for fame becomes a man more towards the exit than at his entrance into life.

The desire of fame hath been no inconsiderable motive to quicken you in the pursuit of those actions which will best deserve it.

Nothing is so great an instance of ill manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; if you flatter only one or two, you affront the rest.

I have been considering why poets have such ill success in making their court, since they are allowed to be the greatest and best of all flatterers: the defect is that they flatter only in print or in writing.

The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Of what use is freedom of thought, if it will not produce freedom of action, which is the sole end, how remote soever in appearance, of all objections against Christianity? And therefore the freethinkers consider it as an edifice wherein all the parts have such a mutual dependence on each other, that if you pull out one single nail the whole fabric must fall to the ground.

Nature and common reason, in all difficulties where prudence or courage are required, do rather incite us to fly for assistance to a single person than a multitude.

The smallest accident intervening often produces such changes that a wise man is just as much in doubt of events as the most ignorant and unexperienced.

The fear of punishment in this life will preserve men from few vices, since some of the blackest often prove the surest steps to favour; such as ingratitude, hypocrisy, treachery, and subornation.

I count it a great error to count upon the genius of a nation as a standing argument in all ages.

Every age might perhaps produce one or two true geniuses, if they were not sunk under the censure and obloquy of plodding, servile, imitating pedants.

If there be any difference in natural parts, it should seem the advantage lies on the side of children born from wealthy parents, the same traditional sloth and luxury which render their body weak perhaps refining their spirits.

This evil fortune which attends extraordinary men hath been imputed to divers causes that need not be set down when so obvious a one occurs, that when a great genius appears the dunces are all in conspiracy against him.

The three forms of government have their several perfections, and are subject to their several depravations: however, few states are ruined by defect in their institution, but generally by corruption of manners.

Hereditary right should be kept sacred; not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.

An hereditary right is to be preferred before election, because the government is so disposed that it almost executes itself; and upon the death of a prince the administration goes on without any rub or interruption.

Great changes may be made in a government, yet the form continue; but large intervals of time must pass between every such innovation, enough to make it of a piece with the constitution.

It may pass for a maxim in state, that the administration cannot be placed in too few hands, nor the legislature in too many.

When the balance of power is duly fixed in a state, nothing is more dangerous or unwise than to give way to the first steps of popular encroachment.

In countries of freedom, princes are bound to protect their subjects in liberty, property, and religion, to receive their petitions and redress their grievances.

From the practice of the wisest nations, when a prince was laid aside for maladministration, the nobles and people did resume the administration of the supreme power.

Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbours: however, they are real blessings when in the hands of good men.

So endless and exorbitant are the desires of men, that they will grasp at all, and can form no scheme of perfect happiness with less.

How shall any man who hath a genius for history undertake such a work with spirit and cheerfulness, when he considers that he will be read with pleasure but a very few years?

The Greek tongue received many enlargements between the time of Homer and that of Plutarch.

The most plain, short, and lawful way to any good end is more eligible than one directly contrary in some or all of these qualities.

No man of honour, as that word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honour obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavour to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

He appealed to me whether in those countries I had travelled, as well as my own, I had not observed the same general disposition.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to another.

I agree with Sir William Temple, that the word humour is peculiar to our English tongue; but not that the thing itself is peculiar to the English, because the contrary may be found in many Spanish, Italian, and French productions.

Hypocrisy is much more eligible than open infidelity and vice: it wears the livery of religion, and is cautious of giving scandal: nay, continued disguises are too great a constraint; men would leave off their vices rather than undergo the toil of practising them in private.

The making religion necessary to interest might increase hypocrisy; but if one in twenty should be brought to true piety, and nineteen be only hypocrites, the advantage would still be great.

It is possible for a man who hath the appearance of religion to be wicked and an hypocrite; but it is impossible for a man who openly declares against religion to give any reasonable security that he will not be false and cruel.

Whatever appears against their prevailing vice goes for nothing, being either not applied, or passing for libel and slander.

All the writers against Christianity since the Revolution have been of the lowest rank in regard to literature, wit, and sense; and upon that account wholly unqualified to propagate heresies, unless among a people already abandoned.

Men always grow vicious before they become unbelievers; but if you would once convince profligates by topics drawn from the view of their own quiet, reputation, and health, their infidelity would soon drop off.

Let it consist with an unbeliever’s interest and safety to wrong you, and then it will be impossible you can have any hold upon him; because there is nothing left to give him a check, or to put in the balance against his profit.

He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the evil that a man can be guilty of.

If in company you offer something for a jest, and nobody seconds you on your own laughter, you may condemn their taste, and appeal to better judgments; but in the meantime you make a very indifferent figure.

No man ought to be charged with principles he actually disowns, unless his practices contradict his profession; not upon small surmises.

Princes have it in their power to keep a majority on their side by any tolerable administration, till provoked by continual oppressions.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

One cannot attempt the perfect reforming the languages of the world without rendering himself ridiculous.

I would rather have trusted the refinement of our language, as to sound, to the judgment of the women than to half-witted poets.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

A law may be reasonable in itself, although a man does not allow it, or does not know the reason of the lawgivers.

Hobbes confounds the executive with the legislative power, though all well-instituted states have ever placed them in different hands.

There is no commonplace more insisted on than the happiness of trials by juries; yet if this blessed part of our law be eludible by power and artifice, we shall have little reason to boast.

I never heard a finer satire against lawyers than that of astrologers; when they pretend, by rules of art, to tell when a suit will end, and whether to the advantage of the plaintiff or defendant.

Ink is the great missive weapon in all battles of the learned.

A people long used to hardships lose by degrees the very notions of liberty: they look upon themselves as at mercy.

Philosophers say that man is a microcosm, or little world, resembling in miniature every part of the great; and the body natural may be compared to the body politic.

According to this equality wherein God hath placed all mankind with relation to himself, in all the relations between man and man there is a mutual dependence.

It is the talent of human nature to run from one extreme to the other.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse.

One principal point of good breeding is to suit our behaviour to the three several degrees of men,—our superiors, our equals, and those below us.

When our betters tell us they are our humble servants, but understand us to be their slaves.

Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men’s power to be agreeable.

Civility, intended to make us easy, is employed in laying chains and fetters upon us, in debarring us of our wishes, and in crossing our most reasonable desires.

The mock authoritative manner of the one, and the insipid mirth of the other.

Horace advises the Romans to seek a seat in some remote part, by way of a cure for the corruption of manners.

The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot, can, by two or three touches with a lead-pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.

A wise man should have money in his head; but not in his heart.

It is found by experience, those men who set up for morality without regard to religion are generally but virtuous in part.

The system of morality to be gathered from the … ancient sages falls very short of that delivered in the gospel.

Mysteries held by us have no power, pomp, or wealth, but have been maintained by the universal body of true believers from the days of the apostles, and will be to the resurrection. Neither will the gates of hell prevail against them.

I do not attempt explaining the mysteries of the Christian religion: since Providence intended there should be mysteries it cannot be agreeable to piety, orthodoxy, or good sense to go about it.

If God should please to reveal unto us this great mystery of the Holy Trinity, or some other mysteries in our holy religion, we should not be able to understand them unless he would bestow on us some new faculties of the mind.

Opinions, like fashions, always descend from those of quality to the middle sort; and thence to the vulgar, where they are dropped and vanish.

That was excellently observed, says I, when I read a passage in an author where his opinion agrees with mine.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, and learning, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The constant design of both these orators in all their speeches was to drive some one particular point.

Grandfathers in private families are not much observed to have great influence on their grandsons, and I believe they have much less among princes.

Outrageous party-writers are like a couple of makebates, who inflame small quarrels by a thousand stories.

Instead of inquiring whether he be a man of virtue, the question is only whether he be a whig or a tory; under which terms all good and ill qualities are included.

The most violent party men are such as, in the conduct of their lives, have discovered least sense of religion or morality, and when such are laid aside as shall be found incorrigible, it will be no difficulty to reconcile the rest.

Whether those who are leaders of a party arrive at that station more by a sort of instinct, or influence of the stars, than by the possession of any great abilities, may be a point of much dispute.

It may serve for a great lesson of humiliation to mankind to behold the habits and passions of men trampling over interest, friendship, honour, and their own personal safety, as well as that of their country.

When the heart is full, it is angry at all words that cannot come up to it.

We should avoid the vexation and impertinence of pedants, who affect to talk in a language not to be understood.

Some physicians have thought that if it were practicable to keep the humours of the body in an exact balance of each with its opposite, it might be immortal; but this is impossible in the practice.

Should any man argue that a physician understands his own art best, and therefore, although he should prescribe poison to all his patients, he cannot be justly punished, but is answerable only to God?

Such an aversion and contempt for all manner of innovators as physicians are apt to have for empirics, or lawyers for pettifoggers.

A wise man will find us to be rogues by our faces: we have a suspicious, fearful, constrained countenance, often turning and slinking through narrow lanes.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor; ’tis like spending this year part of the next year’s revenue.

The man who can make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, grow on the spot where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and render more essential service to the country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

I could produce innumerable instances from my own observation of events imputed to the profound skill and address of a minister, which, in reality, were either mere effects of negligence, weakness, humour, passion, or pride; or at best, but the natural course of things left to themselves.

All pretences to neutrality are justly exploded, only intending the safety and ease of a few individuals, while the public is embroiled. This was the opinion and practice of the latter Cato.

States call in foreigners to assist them against a common enemy; but the mischief was, these allies would never allow that the common enemy was subdued.

You are as giddy and volatile as ever; just the reverse of Mr. Pope, who hath always loved a domestic life.

These orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

A usurping populace is its own dupe, a mere underworker, and a purchaser in trust for some single tyrant.

In their [a body of commons] results we have sometimes found the same spirit of cruelty and revenge, of malice and pride, the same blindness and obstinacy and unsteadiness, the same ungovernable rage and anger, the same injustice, sophistry, and fraud, that ever lodged in the breast of any individual.

If the poor found the rich disposed to supply their wants, or if the weak might always find protection from the mighty, they could none of them lament their own condition.

When the balance of power is firmly fixed in a state, nothing is more dangerous or unwise than to give way to the first steps of popular encroachments.

Power, when employed to relieve the oppressed and to punish the oppressor, becomes a great blessing.

As I take it, the two principal branches of preaching are, to tell the people what is their duty, and then to convince them that it is so: the topics for both are brought from Scripture and reason.

I cannot get over the prejudice of taking some little offence at the clergy for perpetually reading their sermons; perhaps my frequent hearing of foreigners, who never make use of notes, may have added to my disgust.

In preaching, no men succeed better than those who trust to the fund of their own reason, advanced, but not overlaid, by their commerce with books.

I know a gentleman who made it a rule in reading to skip over all sentences where he spied a note of admiration at the end. If those preachers who abound in epiphonemas would but look about them, they would find one part of their congregation out of countenance, and the other asleep, except perhaps an old female beggar or two in the aisles; who, if they be sincere, may probably groan at the sound.

I have listened with my utmost attention for half an hour to an orator without being able to carry away one single sentence out of a whole sermon.

Although the advantages one man possesseth more than another may be called his property with respect to other men, yet with respect to God they are only a trust.

Quotations are best brought in to confirm some opinion controverted.

Whoever only reads to transcribe shining remarks, without entering into the genius and spirit of the author, will be apt to be misled out of the regular way of thinking; and all the product of all this will be found a manifest incoherent piece of patchwork.

Where wit hath any mixture of raillery, it is but calling it banter, and the work is done.

It is hard that not one gentleman’s daughter should read her own tongue; as any one may find who can hear them when they are disposed to mangle a play or a novel, where the least word out of the common road disconcerts them.

It is an old and true distinction, that things may be above our reason without being contrary to it. Of this kind are the power, the nature, and the universal presence of God, with innumerable other points.

It is not so much the being exempt from faults, as the having overcome them, that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with the weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.

It would be well if people would not lay so much weight on their own reason in matters of religion as to think everything impossible and absurd which they cannot conceive: how often do we contradict the right rules of reason in the whole course of our lives! Reason itself is true and just, but the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices.

What remedy can be found against grievances, but to bring religion into countenance, and encourage those who, from the hope of future reward, and dread of future punishment, will be moved to justice and integrity?

It is a very just reproach that there should be so much violence and hatred in religious matters among men who agree in all fundamentals, and only differ in some ceremonies, or mere speculative points.

A heathen emperor said if the gods were offended it was their own concern, and they were able to vindicate themselves.

Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches, as to conceive how others can be in want.

Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders generally discover everybody’s face but their own;—which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so few are offended with it.

It is as hard to satirize well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into love of ourselves: but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others; and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

That was excellently observed, say I, when I read a passage in an author where his opinion agrees with mine.

There is in most people a reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe even among the vulgar how fond they are to have an inscription over their grave.

Our love of God will inspire us with a detestation for sin, as what is of all things most contrary to his divine nature.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as we usually find that to be the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

When men and women are mixed and well chosen, and put their best qualities forward, there may be any intercourse of civility and good will.

Though we cannot prolong the period of a commonwealth beyond the decree of heaven, or the date of its nature, any more than human life beyond the strength of the seminal virtue, yet we may manage a sickly constitution, and preserve a strong one.

Temperance, industry, and a public spirit, running through the whole body of the people in Holland, hath preserved an infant commonwealth of a sickly constitution, through so many dangers as a much more healthy one could never have struggled against without those advantages.

If we would suppose a ministry where every single person was of distinguished piety, and all great officers of state and law diligent in choosing persons who in their several subordinations would be obliged to follow the examples of their superiors, the empire of irreligion would be soon destroyed.

The ruin of a state is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners, and contempt of religion, which is entirely our case at present.

The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Story-telling is subject to two unavoidable defects,—frequent repetition and being soon exhausted; so that whoever values this gift in himself has need of a good memory, and ought frequently to shift his company.

Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style.

The court, which used to be the standard of propriety and correctness of speech, ever since continued the worst school in England for that accomplishment.

The best English historian, when his style grows antiquated, will be only considered as a tedious relater of facts, and perhaps consulted to furnish materials for some future collector.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive to perfection.

The scholars of Ireland seem not to have the least conception of a style, but run on in a flat phraseology, often mingled with barbarous terms.

Poets, although not insensible how much our language was already over-stocked with monosyllables, yet, to save time and pains, introduced that barbarous custom of abbreviating words to fit them to the measure of their verses.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

It is with theories as with wells: you may see to the bottom of the deepest if there be any water there, while another shall pass for wondrous profound when ’tis merely shallow, dark, and empty.

Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time by the forelock; for, when it is once past, there is no recalling it.

No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same train of thought that elder people have tried in vain to put into our heads before.

If the learned would not sometimes submit to the ignorant, the old to the weaknesses of the young, there would be nothing but everlasting variance in the world.

I used to wonder how a man of birth and spirit could endure to be wholly insignificant and obscure in a foreign country, when he might live with lustre in his own.

Exploding many things under the name of trifles is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and a great check to virtuous actions with regard to fame.

While it is so difficult to learn the springs and motives of some facts, it is no wonder they should be so grossly misrepresented to the public by curious inquisitive heads.

To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess that these honours were more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the honours below his merit, and scorns to boast.

If vice cannot wholly be eradicated, it ought to be confined to particular objects.

Our grandchildren will see a few rags hung up in Westminster Hall which cost an hundred millions,—whereof they are paying the arrears,—and boast that their grandfathers were rich and great.

One man pursues power in order to wealth, and another wealth in order to power, which last is the safer way, and generally followed.

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

I have seen the dullest men aiming at wit, and others with as little pretensions affecting politeness in manners and discourse.

Learned women have lost all credit by their impertinent talkativeness and conceit.

Many words deserve to be thrown out of our language, and not a few antiquated to be restored, on account of their energy and sound.

In London they clip their words after one manner about the court, another in the city, and a third in the suburbs; all which reduced to writing would entirely confound orthography.

This disposition to shorten our words, by retrenching the vowels, is nothing else but a tendency to lapse into the barbarity of those northern nations from whom we are descended, and whose languages all labour under the same defect.

They have joined the most obdurate consonants without one intervening vowel, only to shorten a syllable; so that most of the books we see now-a-days are full of those manglings and abbreviations.

Several clergymen, otherwise little fond of obscure terms, are in their sermons very liberal of all those which they find in ecclesiastical writers, as if it were our duty to understand them.

Young men look rather to the past age than the present, and therefore the future may have some hopes of them.

If Christianity were once abolished, how could the free thinkers, the strong reasoners, and the men of profound learning, be able to find another subject so calculated, in all points, whereon to display their abilities? What wonderful productions of wit should we be deprived of from those whose genius, by continual practice, hath been wholly turned upon raillery and invectives against religion, and would therefore never be able to shine or distinguish themselves upon any other subject! We are daily complaining of the great decline of wit among us, and would take away the greatest, perhaps the only topic we have left…. For had an hundred such pens as these been employed on the side of religion, they would have immediately sunk into silence and oblivion.

I procrastinate more than I did twenty years ago, and have several things to finish which I put off to twenty years hence.

Although virtuous men do sometimes accidentally make their way to preferment, yet the world is so corrupted that no man can reasonably hope to be rewarded in it merely on account of his virtue.

Xenophon tells us that the city contained about ten thousand houses; and allowing one man to every house, who could have any share in the government, (the rest consisting of women, children, and servants,) and making other obvious abatements, these tyrants, if they had been careful to adhere together, might have been a majority even of the people collectively.

I would engage to furnish you with a catalogue of English books, published within the compass of seven years past, which at the first hand would cost you a hundred pounds, wherein you shall not be able to find ten lines together of common grammar or common sense.

These two evils, ignorance and want of taste, have produced a third; I mean the continual corruption of our English tongue, which, without some timely remedy, will suffer more by the false refinements of twenty years past, than it hath been improved in the foregoing hundred.

I should be glad to see you the instrument of introducing into our style that simplicity which is the best and truest ornament of most things in life, which the politer ages always aimed at in their building and dress, simplex munditiis, as well as their productions of wit. It is manifest that all new affected modes of speech, whether borrowed from the court, the town, or the theatre, are the first perishing parts in any language; and, as I could prove by many hundred instances, have been so in ours. The writings of Hooker, who was a country clergyman, and of Parsons the Jesuit, both in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, are in a style that, with very few allowances, would not offend any present reader, and are much more clear and intelligible than those of Sir Harry Wotton, Sir Robert Naunton, Osborn, Daniel the historian, and several others who writ later; but being men of the court, and affecting the phrases then in fashion, they are often either not to be understood, or appear perfectly ridiculous.

Your inattention I cannot pardon: Pope has the same defect, neither is Bolingbroke untinged with it.

Have you not observed that there is a lower kind of discretion and regularity, which seldom fails of raising men to the highest stations in the court, the church, and the law? Did you never observe one of your clerks cutting his paper with a blunt ivory knife? Did you ever know the knife to fail going the true way? Whereas if he had used a razor or a penknife, he had odds against himself of spoiling a whole sheet. I have twenty times compared the notion of that ivory implement to those talents that thrive best at court.

These look up to you with reverence, and would be animated by the sight of him at whose soul they have taken fire in his writings.