“Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There can be no Christianity where there is no charity”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.”
“When the frustration of my helplessness seemed greatest, I discovered God's grace was more than sufficient. And after my imprisonment, I could look back and see how God used my powerlessness for His purpose. What He has chosen for my most significant witness was not my triumphs or victories, but my defeat.”
“We ask advice but we mean approbation.”
Source: L.P.
“Where we cannot invent, we may at least improve.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Injuries accompanied with insults are never forgiven: all men, on these occasions, are good haters, and lay out their revenge at compound interest.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.”
“It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.”
“Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Let those who would affect singularity with success first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The avarice of the miser may be termed the grand sepulchral of all his other passions, as they successively decay.”
“Pedantry prides herself on being wrong by rules; while common sense is contented to be right without them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If you are under obligations to many, it is prudent to postpone the recompensing of one, until it be in your power to remunerate all; otherwise you will make more enemies by what you give, than by what you withhold.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“No disorders have employed so many quacks, as those that have no cure; and no sciences have exercised so many quills, as those that have no certainty.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Professors in every branch of the sciences, prefer their own theories to truth: the reason is that their theories are private property, but truth is common stock.”
“It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If rich, it is easy enough to conceal our wealth; but, if poor, it is not quite so easy to conceal our poverty. We shall find that it is less difficult to hide a thousand guineas, than one hole in our coat.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.”
“The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Men's arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.”
“Pride is less ashamed of being ignorant, than of being instructed, and she looks too high to find that, which very often lies beneath her.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow; but the misfortune is that in this particular case, the substance belongs to the shadow, the emptiness to its cause.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Pain may be said to follow pleasure as its shadow.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The three great apostles of practical atheism, that make converts without persecuting, and retain them without preaching, are wealth, health and power.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“No metaphysician ever felt the deficiency of language so much as the grateful.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.”
“We should not be too niggardly in our praise, for men will do more to support a character than to raise one.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“There are three kinds of praise, that which we yield, that which we lend, and that which we pay. We yield it to the powerful from fear, we lend it to the weak from interest, and we pay it to the deserving from gratitude.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with our all to keep it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“I will not be revenged, and this I owe to my enemy; but I will remember, and this I owe to myself.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“By paying our other debts, we are equal with all mankind; but in refusing to pay a debt of revenge, we are superior.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“An act by which we make one friend and one enemy is a losing game; because revenge is a much stronger principle than gratitude”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Most importantly: Don't adjust your results to build up the ego of the chief strategist. Especially if the strategist is you.”
“Be real and adjust you strategy according to honest results.”
“My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.”
“He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The policy that can strike only while the iron is hot will be overcome by that perseverance, which ... can make that iron hot by striking and he that can only rule the storm must yield to him who can both raise and rule it.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“There are three difficulties in authorship;-to write any thing worth the publishing-to find honest men to publish it -and to get sensible men to read it. Literature has now become a game; in which the Booksellers are the Kings; The Critics the Knaves; the Public, the Pack; and the poor Author, the mere table, or the Thing played upon.”
“We should have a glorious conflagration, if all who cannot put fire into their works would only consent to put their works into the fire.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...”
“What is earthly happiness? that phantom of which we hear so much, and see so little; whose promises are constantly given and constantly broken, but as constantly believed; that cheats us with the sound instead of the substance, and with the blossom instead of the fruit. Like Juno, she is a goddess in pursuit, but a cloud in possession.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
