“There are three kinds of power,--wealth, strength, and talent; but as old age always weakens, often destroys, the two latter, the aged are induced to cling with the greater avidity to the former.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“If once a woman breaks through the barriers of decency, her ease is desperate; and if she goes greater lengths than the men, and leaves the pale of propriety farther behind her, it is because she is aware that all return is prohibited, and by none so strongly as by her own sex.”
“Deformity of the heart I call
The worst deformity of all;
For what is form, or what is face,
But the soul's index, or its case?”
“We strive as hard to hide our hearts from ourselves as from others, and always with more success; for in deciding upon our own case we are both judge, jury, and executioner, and where sophistry cannot overcome the first, or flattery the second, self-love is always ready to defeat the sentence by bribing the third.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Doubt is the vestibule of faith.”
“Dreams ought to produce no conviction whatever on philosophical minds. If we consider how many dreams are dreamt every night, and how many events occur every day, we shall no longer wonder at those accidental coincidences which ignorance mistakes for verifications.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Metaphysicians have been learning their lessons for the last four thousand years, and it is high time that they should now begin to teach us something. Can any of the tribe inform us why all the operations of the mind are carried on with undiminished strength and activity in dreams, except the judgment, which alone is suspended and dormant?”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words Addressed to Those who Think
“The head of dullness, unlike the tail of the torpedo, loses nothing of the benumbing and lethargizing influence by reiterated discharges.”
“The acquirements of science maybe termed the armor of the mind.”
“The awkwardness and embarrassment which all feel on beginning to write, when they themselves are the theme, ought to serve as a hint to author's that self is a subject they ought very rarely to descant upon.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Make no enemies; he is insignificant indeed that can do thee no harm.”
“As the gout seems privileged to attack the bodies of the wealthy, so ennui seems to exert a similar prerogative over their minds.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The victims of ennui paralyze all the grosser feelings by excess, and torpify all the finer by disuse and inactivity. Disgusted with this world, and indifferent about another, they at last lay violent hands upon themselves, and assume no small credit for the sang froid with which they meet death. But, alas! such beings can scarcely be said to die, for they have never truly lived.”
“The enthusiast has been compared to a man walking in a fog; everything immediately around him, or in contact with him, appears sufficiently clear and luminous; but beyond the little circle of which he himself is the centre, all is mist and error and confusion.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“As the rays of the sun, notwithstanding their velocity, injure not the eye, by reason of their minuteness, so the attacks of envy, notwithstanding their number, ought not to wound our virtue by reason of their insignificance.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Emulation looks out for merits, that she may exalt herself by a victory; envy spies out blemishes that she may lower another by defeat.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The hate which we all bear with the most Christian patience is the hate of those who envy us.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The praise of the envious is far less creditable than their censure; they praise only that which they can surpass, but that which surpasses them they censure.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“To diminish envy, let us consider not what others possess, but what they enjoy; mere riches may be the gift of lucky accident or blind chance, but happiness must be the result of prudent preference and rational design; the highest happiness then can have no other foundation than the deepest wisdom; and the happiest fool is only as happy as he knows how to be.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Error, when she retraces her steps, has farther to go before she can arrive at truth than ignorance.”
“The blindness of bigotry, the madness of ambition, and the miscalculations of diplomacy seek their victims principally amongst the innocent and the unoffending. The cottage is sure to suffer for every error of the court, the cabinet, or the camp. When error sits in the seat of power and of authority, and is generated in high places, it may be compared to that torrent which originates indeed in the mountain, but commits its devastation in the vale.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“He that will often put eternity and the world before him, and who will dare to look steadfastly at both of them, will find that the more often he contemplates them, the former will grow greater, and the latter less.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“I question if Epicurus and Hume have done mankind a greater service by the looseness of their doctrines than by the purity of their lives. Of such men we may more justly exclaim, than of Caesar, "Confound their virtues, they've undone the world!”
“In its primary signification, all vice, that is, all excess, brings on its own punishment, even here. By certain fixed, settled and established laws of Him who is the God of nature, excess of every kind destroys that constitution which temperance would preserve. The debauchee offers up his body a "living sacrifice to sin.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice--that is, all excess--brings its own punishment even here.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Too high an appreciation of our own talents is the chief cause why experience preaches to us all in vain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“That extremes beget extremes is an apothegm built on the most profound observation of the human mind.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Faith and works are necessary to our spiritual life as Christians, as soul and body are to our natural life as men; for faith is the soul of religion, and works the body.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.”
“Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality, only in one. But truth, like that reality of which the perspective is the representation, will bear to be scrutinized in all points of view, and though examined under every situation, is one and the same.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“As there are some faults that have been termed faults on the right side, so there are some errors that might be denominated errors on the safe side. Thus we seldom regret having been too mild, too cautious, or too humble; but we often repent having been too violent, too precipitate, or too proud.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There is this paradox in fear: he is most likely to inspire it in others who has none himself!”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“That profound firmness which enabler a man to regard difficulties but as evils to be surmounted, no matter what shape they may assume.”
“We must suit the flattery to the mind and taste of the recipient. We do not put essences into hogsheads, nor porter into phials. Delicate minds may be disgusted by compliments that would please a grosser intellect; as some fine ladies who would be shocked at the idea of a dram will not refuse a liqueur.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“A fool is often as dangerous to deal with as a knave, and always more incorrigible.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“He that openly tells, his friends all that he thinks of them, must expect that they will secretly tell his enemies much that they do not think of him.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“The only kind office performed for us by our friends of which we never complain is our funeral; and the only thing which we most want, happens to be the only thing we never purchase--our coffin.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It has been well observed that we should treat futurity as an aged friend from whom we expect a rich legacy.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If that marvellous microcosm, man, with all the costly cargo of his faculties and powers, were indeed a rich argosy, fitted out and freighted only for shipwreck and destruction, who amongst us that tolerate the present only from the hope of the future, who that have any aspirings of a high and intellectual nature about them, could be brought to submit to the disgusting mortifications of the voyage?”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Gaming has been resorted to by the affluent as a refuge from ennui. It is a mental dram, and may succeed for a moment; but, like all other stimuli, it produces indirect debility.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Gaming is the child of avarice, but the parent of prodigality.”
Source: L.P.
“Neither can we admit that definition of genius that some would propose--"a power to accomplish all that we undertake;" for we might multiply examples to prove that this definition of genius contains more than the thing defined. Cicero failed in poetry, Pope in painting, Addison in oratory; yet it would be harsh to deny genius to these men.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The road to glory would cease to be arduous if it were trite and trodden; and great minds must be ready not only to take opportunities but to make them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are two things which ought to teach us to think but meanly of human glory; the very best have had their calumniators, the very worst their panegyrists.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are two metals, one of which is omnipotent in the cabinet, and the other in the camp--gold and iron. He that knows how to apply them both may indeed attain the highest station.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Those who worship gold in a world so corrupt as this we live in have at least one thing to plead in defense of their idolatry--the power of their idol. It is true that, like other idols, it can neither move, see, hear, feel, nor understand; but, unlike other idols, it has often communicated all these powers to those who had them not, and annihilated them in those who had. This idol can boast of two peculiarities; it is worshipped in all climates, without a single temple, and by all classes, without a single hypocrite.”
“We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves. When we see the martyr to virtue, subject as he is to the infirmities of a man, yet suffering the tortures of a demon, and bearing them with the magnanimity of a God, do we not behold a heroism that angels may indeed surpass, but which they cannot imitate, and must admire.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
