“It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat; and worldly wisdom dictates to her disciples the propriety of dressing somewhat beyond their means, but of living somewhat within them,--for every one, sees how we dress, but none see how we live, except we choose to let them. But the truly great are, by universal suffrage, exempted from these trammels, an may live or dress as they please.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.”
“He that can enjoy the intimacy of the great, and on no occasion disgust them by familiarity, or disgrace himself by servility, proves that he is as perfect a gentleman by nature as his companions are by rank.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Address--to Those who Think
“It is adverse to talent to be consorted and trained up with inferior minds and inferior companions, however high they may rank. The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed nor calls out his powers if pastured out with the common herd, that are destined for the collar and the yoke.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“When we live habitually with the wicked, we become necessarily either their victim or their disciple; when we associate, on the contrary, with virtuous men, we form ourselves in imitation of their virtues, or, at least, lose every day something of our faults.”
“Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The truly great consider, first, how they may gain the approbation of God, and, secondly, that of their own conscience. Having done this, they would then willingly conciliate the good opinion of their fellow-men. But the truly little reverse the thing. The primary object with them is to secure the applause of their fellow-men; and having effected this, the approbation of God and their own conscience may follow on as they can.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Living authors, therefore, are usually, bad companions. If they have not gained character, they seek to do so by methods often ridiculous, always disgusting; and if they have established a character, they are silent for fear of losing by their tongue what they have acquired by their pen--for many authors converse much more foolishly than Goldsmith, who have never written half so well.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Subtract from many modern poets all that may be found in Shakespeare, and trash will remain.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“That an author's work is the mirror of his mind is a position that has led to very false conclusions. If Satan himself were to write a book it would be in praise of virtue, because the good would purchase it for use, and the bad for ostentation.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“That author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are both dull correctness and piquant carelessness; it is needless to say which will command the most readers and have the most influence.”
“Avarice begets more vices than Priam did children and like Priam survives them all. It starves its keeper to surfeit those who wish him dead, and makes him submit to more mortifications to lose heaven than the martyr undergoes to gain it.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Women who are the least bashful are not unfrequently the most modest; and we are never more deceived than when we would infer any laxity of principle from that freedom of demeanor which often arises from a total ignorance of vice.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Sturdy beggars can bear stout denials.”
“As there are none so weak that we may venture to injure them with impunity, so there are none so low that they may not at some time be able to repay an obligation. Therefore, what benevolence would dictate, prudence would confirm.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“God will excuse our prayers for ourselves whenever we are prevented from them by being occupied in such good works as to entitle us to the prayers of others.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“That is fine benevolence, finely executed, which, like the Nile, comes from hidden sources.”
“Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenboeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.”
“We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.”
“He that abuses his own profession will not patiently bear with any one else who does so. And this is one of our most subtle operations of self-love. For when we abuse our own profession, we tacitly except ourselves; but when another abuses it, we are far from being certain that this is the case.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.”
“Cheerfulness ought to be the viaticum vitae of their life to the old; age without cheerfulness is a Lapland winter without a sun.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Alas! how has the social spirit of Christianity been perverted by fools at one time, and by knaves and bigots at another; by the self-tormentors of the cell, and the all-tormentors of the conclave!”
“All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. If there be, amongst the sons of men, a single exception to this maxim, the divine Socrates may be allowed to put in the strongest claim. It was his high ambition to deserve, by deeds, not by creeds, an unrevealed heaven, and by works, not by faith, to enter an unpromised land.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“We devote the activity of our youth to revelry and the decrepitude of our old age to repentance: and we finish the farce by bequeathing our dead bodies to the chancel, which when living, we interdicted from the church.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Be very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“None are so seldom found alone, and are so soon tired of their own company, as those coxcombs who are on the best terms with themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When young, we trust ourselves too much, and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The breast of a good man is a little heaven commencing on earth; where the Deity sits enthroned with unrivaled influence, every subjugated passion, "like the wind and storm, fulfilling his word.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“To be satisfied with the acquittal of the world, though accompanied with the secret condemnation of conscience, this is the mark of a little mind; but it requires a soul of no common stamp to be satisfied with its own acquittal, and to despise the condemnation of the world.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“We should have all our communications with men, as in the presence of God; and with God, as in the presence of men.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Cruel men are the greatest lovers of Mercy, avaricious men of generosity, and proud men of humility; that is to say, in other, not in themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree. The reason perhaps is this: when we find others that agree with us, we seldom trouble ourselves to confirm that agreement; but when we chance on those who differ from us, we are zealous both to convince and to convert them. Our pride is hurt by the failure, and disappointed pride engenders hatred.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Some men are very entertaining for a first interview, but after that they are exhausted, and run out; on a second meeting we shall find them flat and monotonous; like hand-organs, we have heard all their tunes.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The most zealous converters are always the most rancorous when they fail of producing conversion.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A town, before it can be plundered and, deserted, must first be taken; and in this particular Venus has borrowed a law from her consort Mars. A woman that wishes to retain her suitor must keep him in the trenches; for this is a siege which the besieger never raises for want of supplies, since a feast is more fatal to love than a fast, and a surfeit than a starvation. Inanition may cause it to die a slow death, but repletion always destroys it by a sudden one.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“In all places, and in all times, those religionists who have believed too much have been more inclined to violence and persecution than those who have believed too little.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is a curious paradox that precisely in proportion to our own intellectual weakness will be our credulity, to those mysterious powers assumed by others; and in those regions of darkness and ignorance where man cannot effect even those things that are within the power of man, there we shall ever find that a blind belief in feats that are far beyond those powers has taken the deepest root in the minds of the deceived, and produced the richest harvest to the knavery of the deceiver.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It may be observed of good writing, as of good blood, that it is much easier to say what it is composed of than to compose it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“To be a mere verbal critic is what no man of genius would be if he could; but to be a critic of true taste and feeling is what no man without genius could be if he would.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Criticism is like champagne, nothing more execrable if bad, nothing more excellent if good; if meagre, muddy, vapid and sour, both are fit only to engender colic and wind; but if rich, generous and sparkling, they communicate a genial glow to the spirits, improve the taste, and expand the heart.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Taking things not as they ought to be, but as they are, I fear it must be allowed that Macchiavelli will always have more disciples than Jesus.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Custom is the law of one description of fools, and fashion of another; but the two parties often clash--for precedent is the legislator of the first, and novelty of the last. Custom, therefore, looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When all moves equally (says Pascal), nothing seems to move as in a vessel under sail; and when all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so. He that stops first, views as from a fixed point the horrible extravagance that transports the rest.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think
