“Self-love, in a well-regulated breast, is as the steward of the household, superintending the expenditure, and seeing that benevolence herself should be prudential, in order to be permanent, by providing that the reservoir which feeds should also be fed.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The most notorious swindler has not assumed so many names as self-love, nor is so much ashamed of his own. She calls herself patriotism, when at the same time she is rejoicing at just as much calamity to her native country as will introduce herself into power, and expel her rivals.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“There are too many who reverse both the principles and the practice of the Apostles; they become all things to all men, not to serve others, but themselves; and they try all things only to hold fast that which is bad.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Sensibility would be a good portress if she had but one hand; with her right she opens the door to pleasure, but with her left to pain.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Shakespeare, Butler and Bacon have rendered it extremely difficult for all who come after them to be sublime, witty or profound.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“A man's profundity may keep him from opening on a first interview, and his caution on a second; but I should suspect his emptiness, if he carried on his reserve to a third.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“As a man of pleasure, by a vain attempt to be more happy than any man can be, is often more miserable than most men are, so the sceptic, in a vain attempt to be wise beyond what is permitted to man, plunges into a darkness more deplorable, and a blindness more incurable than that of the common herd, whom he despises, and would fain instruct.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think
“The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Sleep, the type of death, is also, like that which it typifies, restricted to the earth. It flies from hell and is excluded from heaven.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“As we ascend in society, like those who climb a mountain, we shall find that the line of perpetual congelation commences with the higher circles; and the nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.”
“Those who have resources within themselves, who can dare to live alone, want friends the least, but, at the same time, best know how to prize them the most. But no company is far preferable to bad, because we are more apt to catch the vices of others than their virtues, as disease is far more contagious than health.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“We submit to the society of those that can inform us, but we seek the society of those whom we can inform. And men of genius ought not to be chagrined if they see themselves neglected. For when we communicate knowledge, we are raised in our own estimation; but when we receive it, we are lowered.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Philosophers have widely differed as to the seat of the soul, and St. Paul has told us that out of the heart proceed murmurings; but there can be no doubt that the seat of perfect contentment is in the head, for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is curious that we pay statesmen for what they say, not for what they do; and judge of them from what they do, not from what they say. Hence they have one code of maxims for profession and another for practice, and make up their consciences as the Neapolitans do their beds, with one set of furniture for show and another for use.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The French have a saying that whatever excellence a man may exhibit in a public station he is very apt to be ridiculous in a private one.”
“He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Miss Edgeworth and Mme. de Stael have proved that there is no sex in style; and Mme. la Roche Jacqueline, and the Duchesse d'Angouleme have proved that there is no sex in courage.”
“Perhaps that is nearly the perfection of good writing which is original, but whose truth alone prevents the reader from suspecting that it is so; and which effects that for knowledge which the lens effects for the sunbeam, when it condenses its brightness in order to increase its force.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Some authors write nonsense in a clear style, and others sense in an obscure one; some can reason without being able to persuade, others can persuade without being able to reason; some dive so deep that they descend into darkness, and others soar so high that they give us no light; and some, in a vain attempt to be cutting and dry, give us only that which is cut and dried. We should labor, therefore, to treat with ease of things that are difficult; with familiarity, of things that are novel; and with perspicuity, of things that are profound.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Style is indeed the valet of genius, and an able one too; but as the true gentleman will appear, even in rags, so true genius will shine, even through the coarsest style.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“When I meet with any persons who write obscurely or converse confusedly, I am apt to suspect two things; first, that such persons do not understand themselves; and secondly, that they are not worthy of being understood by others.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Subtlety will sometimes give safety, no less than strength; and minuteness has sometimes escaped, where magnitude would have been crushed. The little animal that kills the boa is formidable chiefly from its insignificance, which is incompressible by the folds of its antagonist.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“To judge by the event is an error all commit: for in every instance courage, if crowned with success, is heroism; if clouded by defeat, temerity. When Nelson fought his battle in the Sound, it was the result alone that decided whether he was to kiss a hand at court or a rod at a court-martial.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Butler compared the tongues of these eternal talkers to race-horses, which go the faster the less weight they carry.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been well observed that the tongue discovers the state of the mind no less than that of the body; but in either case, before the philosopher or the physician can judge, the patient must open his mouth.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“All preceptors should have that kind of genius described by Tacitus, "equal to their business, but not above it;" a patient industry, with competent erudition; a mind depending more on its correctness than its originality, and on its memory rather than on its invention.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Is there anything more tedious than the often repeated tales of the old and forgetful?”
“Those who have finished by making all others think with them, have usually been those who began by daring to think with themselves.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Time is the most subtle yet the most insatiable of depredators, and by appearing to take nothing is permitted to take all; nor can it be satisfied until it has stolen the world from us, and us from the world. It constantly flies, yet overcomes all things by flight; and although it is the present ally, it will be the future conqueror of death.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Time, the cradle of hope, but the grave of ambition, is the stern corrector of fools, but the salutary counselor of the wise, bringing all they dread to the one, and all they desire to the other.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Address--to Those who Think
“There is more jealousy between rival wits than rival beauties, for vanity has no sex. But in both cases there must be pretensions, or there will be no jealousy.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Vanity finds in self-love so powerful an ally that it storms, as it were, by a coup de main,, the citadel of our heads, where, having blinded the two watchmen, it readily descends into the heart.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“So blinded are we by our passions, that we suffer more to be damned than to be saved.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Villains are usually the worst casuists, and rush into crimes to avoid less. Henry VIII. committed murder to avoid the imputation of adultery; and in our times, those who commit the latter crime attempt to wash off the stain of seducing the wife by signifying their readiness to shoot the husband.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“We are ruined, not by what we really want, but by what we think we do; therefore never go abroad in search of your wants; if they be real wants, they will come home in search of you; for he that buys what he does not want, will soon want what he cannot buy.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“A wise minister would rather preserve peace than gain a victory, because he knows that even the most successful war leaves nations generally more poor, always more profligate, than it found them.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Wars are to the body politic, what drams are to the individual. There are times when they may prevent a sudden death, but if frequently resorted to, or long persisted in, they heighten the energies only to hasten the dissolution.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving gold as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.”
Source: Lacon: or, Many things in few words
“Wit in women is a jewel, which, unlike all others, borrows lustre from its setting, rather than bestows it; since nothing is so easy as to fancy a very beautiful woman extremely witty.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Pleasure is to women what the sun is to the flower; if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates and destroys.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.”
“Words indeed are but the signs and counters of knowledge, and their currency should be strictly regulated by the capital which they represent.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“What would you do if you knew for sure that no one would ever find out?”
“The true measure of your character is what you do when nobody's watching.”
