“Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Hurry is the mark of a weak mind, dispatch of a strong one.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“A hug is worth a thousand words.”
“That which we acquire with the most difficulty we retain the longest; as those who have earned a fortune are usually more careful of it than those who have inherited one.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that places himself neither higher nor lower than he ought to do exercises the truest humility.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty-let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only-those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something maybe learned.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Faults of the head are punished in this world, those of the heart in another; but as most of our vices are compound, so also is their punishment.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that sympathizes in all the happiness of others, perhaps himself enjoys the safest happiness.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“None are so fond of secrets as those who do not mean to keep them; such persons covet secrets as a spendthrift covets money, for the purpose of circulation.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The Grecian’s maxim would indeed be a sweeping clause in Literature; it would reduce many a giant to a pygmy; many a speech to a sentence; and many a folio to a primer.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Others, again, give us the mere carcass of another man’s thoughts, but deprived of all their life and spirit, and this is to add murder to robbery. I have somewhere seen it observed, that we should make the same use of a book, as a bee does of a flower; she steals sweets from it, but does not injure it; and those sweets she herself improves and concocts into honey. But most plagiarists, like the drone, have neither taste to select, nor industry to acquire, nor skill to improve, but impudently pilfer the honey ready prepared from the hive.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Envy ought to have no place allowed it in the hearts of people; for the goods of this present world are so vile and low that they are beneath it; and those of the future world are so vast and exalted that they are above it.”
“Those that will not permit their wealth to do any good for others. . . cut themselves off from the truest pleasure here and the highest happiness later.”
“Repartee is perfect when it effects its purpose with a double edge. It is the highest order of wit, as it indicates the coolest yet quickest exercise of genius, at a moment when the passions are roused.”
“Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.”
“Secrecy is the soul of all great designs.”
Source: Hypocrisy: A Satire
“They that are loudest in their threats are the weakest in the execution of them. It is probable that he who is killed by lightning hears no noise; but the thunder-clap which follows, and which most alarms the ignorant, is the surest proof of their safety.”
“If we look backwards to antiquity it should be as those that are winning a race.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“In all countries where nature does the most, man does the least.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When we are in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things, their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what they have to say we know not.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Fashions smile has given wit to dullness and grace to deformity, and has brought everything into vogue, by turns, but virtue.”
“A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.”
“Those graces which from their presumed facility encourage all to attempt an imitation of them, are usually the most inimitable.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“God is as great in minuteness as He is in magnitude.”
“Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are male as well as female gossips.”
“This world cannot explain its own difficulties without the assistance of another.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“It is easier to pretend to be what you are not than to hide what you really are; but he that can accomplish both has little to learn in hypocrisy.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The science of legislation is like that of medicine in one respect: that it is far more easy to point out what will do harm than what will do good.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Most of our misfortunes are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are two modes of establishing our reputation; to be praised by honest men, and to be abused by rogues.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
