“Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.”
“There is an elasticity in the human mind, capable of bearing much, but which will not show itself, until a certain weight of affliction be put upon it; its powers may be compared to those vehicles whose springs are so contrived that they get on smoothly enough when loaded, but jolt confoundedly when they have nothing to bear.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“With respect to the authority of great names, it should be remembered that he alone deserves to have any weight and influence with posterity, who has shown himself superior to the particular and predominant error of his own times; who, like the peak of Teneriffe, has hailed the intellectual sun before its beams have reached the horizon of common minds.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The most consistent men are not more unlike to others, than they are at times to themselves.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Criticism discloses that which it would fain conceal, but conceals that which it professes to disclose; it is therefore, read by the discerning, not to discover the merits of an author, but the motives of his critic.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is better to meet danger than to wait for it.”
Source: L.P.
“Death is the only sovereign whom no partiality can warp, and no price corrupt.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“There are two things that bestow consequence; great possession, or great debts.”
Source: L.P.
“It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.”
“As in the game of billiards, the balls are constantly producing effects from mere chance, which the most skillful player could neither execute nor foresee, but which, when they do happen, serve mainly to teach him how much he has still to learn; so it is in the most profound and complicated game of politics and diplomacy. In both cases, we can only regulate our play by what we have seen, rather than by what we have hoped; and by what we have experienced, rather than by what we have expected.”
“Of two evils, it is perhaps less injurious to society, that good doctrine should be accompanied by a bad life, than that a good life should lend its support to a bad doctrine.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter into the temple of wisdom; therefore, when we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained a something that will stay by us, and which will serve us again. But, if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought but borrowed it.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.”
“Fashion ... has brought every thing into vogue, by turns.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Adroit observers will find that some who affect to dislike flattery, may yet be flattered indirectly, by a well seasoned abuse and ridicule of their rivals.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Fortune has been considered the guardian divinity of fools; and, on this score, she has been accused of blindness; but it should rather be adduced as a proof of her sagacity, when she helps those who cannot help themselves.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Genius, when employed in works whose tendency it is to demoralize and to degrade us, should be contemplated with abhorrence rather than with admiration; such a monument of its power, may indeed be stamped with immortality, but like the Coliseum at Rome, we deplore its magnificence because we detest the purposes for which it was designed.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“If kings would only determine not to extend their dominions until they had filled them with happiness, they would find the smallest territories too large, but the longest life too short for the full accomplishment of so grand and so noble an ambition.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Much too oft we make life gloomy-- When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see.”
“Hope is a prodigal young heir, and Experience is his banker; but his drafts are seldom honoured, since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital, is not yet in possession, and if he were, would die.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Hypocrites act by virtue.... They frame many counterfeits of her, with which they make an ostentatious parade, in all public assemblies, and processions; but the original of what they counterfeit, and which may indeed be said to have fallen from heaven, they produce so seldom, that it is cankered by the rust of sloth, and useless from non-application.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The integrity that lives only on opinion would starve without it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Where thou perceivest knowledge, bend the ear of attention and respect; But yield not further to the teaching, than as thy mind is warranted by reasons. Better is an obstinant disputant, that yieldeth inch by inch, Than the shallow traitor to himself, who surrendereth to half an argument.”
“It is curious that some learned dunces, because they can write nonsense in languages that are dead, should despise those that talk sense in languages that are living.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The learned languages are indispensable to form the gentleman and the scholar, and are well worth all the labor that they have cost us, provided they are valued not for themselves alone, which would make a pedant, but as a foundation for further acquirements.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The code of poor laws has at length grown up into a tree, which, like the fabulous Upas, overshadows and poisons the land; unwholesome expedients were the bud, dilemmas and depravities have been the blossom, and danger and despair are the bitter fruit.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Light, whether it be material or moral, is the best reformer; for it prevents those disorders which other remedies sometimes cure, but sometimes confirm.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Love is an alchemist that can transmute poison into food.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Love, like the cold bath, is never negative, it seldom leaves us where it finds us; if once we plunge into it, it will either heighten our virtues, or inflame our vices.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“So long as lust, whether of the world or flesh, smells sweet in our nostrils, so long we are loathsome to God.”
“He that gives a portion of his time and talent to the investigation of mathematical truth, will come to all other questions with a decided advantage over his opponents.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Modesty is the richest ornament of a woman ... the want of it is her greatest deformity.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Nobility is a river that sets with a constant and undeviating current, directly into the great Pacific Ocean of Time; but, unlike all other rivers, it is more grand at its source, than at its termination.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“Unity of opinion is indeed a glorious and desirable thing, and its circle cannot be too strong and extended, if the centre be truth; but if the centre be error, the greater the circumference, the greater the evil.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think
“By privileges, immunities, or prerogatives to give unlimited swing to the passions of individuals, and then to hope that they will restrain them, is about as reasonable as to expect that the tiger will spare the hart to browse upon the herbage.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“There is not a little generalship and stratagem required in the managing and marshalling of our pleasures, so that each shall not mutually encroach to the destruction of all. For pleasures are very voracious, too apt to worry one another, and each, like Aaron's serpent, is prone to swallow up the rest. Thus drinking will soon destroy the power, gaming the means, and sensuality the taste, for other pleasures less seductive, but far more salubrious, and permanent as they are pure.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A cool blooded and crafty politician, when he would be thoroughly revenged on his enemy, makes the injuries which have been inflicted, not on himself, but on others, the pretext of his attack. He thus engages the world as a partisan in his quarrel, and dignifies his private hate, by giving it the air of disinterested resentment.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Princes rule the people, and their own passions rule Princes; but Providence can over-rule the whole, and draw the instruments of his inscrutable purposes from the vices, no less than the virtues of Kings.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“False reasoners are often best confuted by giving them the full swing of their own absurdities.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“To be continually subject to the breath of slander, will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case, the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded.”
Source: L.P.
“When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.”
“There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The moral cement of all society is virtue; it unites and preserves, while vice separates and destroys.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“That theatrical kind of virtue, which requires publicity for its stage, and an applauding world for its audience, could not be depended on, in the secrecy of solitude, or the retirement of a desert.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres, makes every difficulty an advancement, and every contest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
