“No one knows where he who invented the plow was born, nor where he died; yet he has done more for humanity than the whole race of heroes who have drenched the earth with blood and whose deeds have been handed down with a precision proportionate only to the mischief they wrought.”
“Extemporaneous and oral harangues will always have this advantage over those that are read from a in manuscript: every burst of eloquence or spark of genius they may contain, however studied they may have been beforehand, will appear to the audience to be the effect of the sudden inspiration of talent.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.”
Source: Lord Chesterfield's advice to his son on men and manners. To which are added, selections from Colton's 'Lacon'.
“Secrecy is the soul of all great designs. Perhaps more has been effected by concealing our own intentions than by discovering those of our enemy.”
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
“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
“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
“The wise man has his follies, no less than the fool; but it has been said that herein lies the difference--the follies of the fool are known to the world, but hidden from himself; the follies of the wise are known to himself, but hidden from the world.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Power. like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. To acquire it, appears not more difficult than to be dispossessed of it when acquired, since it enables the holder to shift his own errors on dependents, and to take their merits to himself. But the miracle of losing it vanishes, when we reflect that we are as liable to fall as to rise, by the treachery of others; and that to say "I am" is language that has been appropriated exclusively to God!”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Discretion has been termed the better part of valour, and it is more certain, that diffidence is the better part of knowledge.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been shrewdly said, that when, men abuse us we should suspect ourselves, and when they praise us, them. It is a rare instance of virtue to despise which censure which we do not deserve; and still more rare to despise praise which we do.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Some philosophers would give a sex to revenge, and appropriate it almost exclusively to the female mind. But, like most other vices, it is of both genders; yet, because wounded vanity and slighted love are the two most powerful excitements to revenge, it has been thought, perhaps, to rage with more violence in the female heart.”
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
“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
“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 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
“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
“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
“We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“All the poets are indebted more or less to those who have gone before them; even Homer's originality has been questioned, and Virgil owes almost as much to Theocritus, in his Pastorals, as to Homer, in his Heroics; and if our own countryman, Milton, has soared above both Homer and Virgil, it is because he has stolen some feathers from their wings.”
“All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay, and present praise. Lord Burleigh is not the only statesman who has thought one hundred pounds too much for a song, though sung by Spenser; although Oliver Goldsmith is the only poet who ever considered himself to have been overpaid.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend to others, but will not take themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been said that men carry on a kind of coasting trade with religion. In the voyage of life, they profess to be in search of heaven, but take care not to venture so far in their approximations to it, as entirely to lose sight of the earth; and should their frail vessel be in danger of shipwreck, they will gladly throw their darling vices overboard, as other mariners their treasures, only to fish them up again when the storm is over.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow, which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. To satisfy such minds, it may be observed, that the slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient, if it produce amendment, and that the greatest is insufficient, if it do not.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“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
“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
“Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.”
“Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If we trace the history of most revolutions, we shall find that the first inroads upon the laws have been made by the governors, as often as by the governed.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“My lowest days as a Christian have been more fulfilling and rewarding than all the days of glory in the White House.”
“With books, as with companions, it is of more consequence to know which to avoid, than which to choose; for good books are as scarce as good companions...”
“Times of great calamity and confusion have been productive for the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace. The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.”
“The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is a mortifying truth, and ought to teach the wisest of us humility, that many of the most valuable discoveries have been the result of chance rather than of contemplation, and of accident rather than of design.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Men are more readily contented with no intellectual light than with a little; and wherever they have been taught to acquire some knowledge in order to please others, they have most generally gone on to acquire more, to please themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is a mistake, that a lust for power is the mark of a great mind; for even the weakest have been captivated by it; and for minds of the highest order, it has no charms.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
