“The upright, if he suffer calumny to move him, fears the tongue of man more than the eye of God.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.”
Source: L.P.
“A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If martyrdom is now on the decline, it is not because martyrs are less zealous, but because martyr-mongers are more wise. The light of intellect has put out the fire of persecution, as other fires are observed to smoulder before the light of the same.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade.”
Source: L.P.
“A beautiful woman, if poor, should use double circumspection; for her beauty will tempt others, her poverty herself.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.”
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Our incomes should be like our shoes, if too small, they will gall and pinch us, but if too large, they will cause us to stumble and to trip. Wealth, after all, is a relative thing, since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much but wants more. True contentment depends not upon what we have; a tub was large enough for Diogenes, but a world was too little for Alexander.”
“Pleasure is to a woman what the sun is to the flower: if moderately enjoyed, it beautifies, it refreshes, and it improves; if immoderately, it withers, deteriorates, and destroys. But the duties of domestic life, exercised as they must be in retirement, and calling forth all the sensibilities of the female, are perhaps as necessary to the full development of her charms, as the shade and the shower are to the rose, confirming its beauty, and increasing its fragrance.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“The gamester, if he die a martyr to his profession, is doubly ruined. He adds his soul to every other loss, and by the act of suicide, renounces earth to forfeit Heaven.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The pride of ancestry is a superstructure of the most imposing height, but resting on the most flimsy foundation. It is ridiculous enough to observe the hauteur with which the old nobility look down on the new. The reason of this puzzled me a little, until I began to reflect that most titles are respectable only because they are old; if new, they would be despised, because all those who now admire the grandeur of the stream would see nothing but the impurity of the source.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“If merited, no courage can stand against its just indignation.”
“If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill.”
Source: L.P.
“If all seconds were as averse to duels as their principals, very little blood would be shed in that way.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“A leveller has long ago been set down as a ridiculous and chimerical being, who, if he could finish his work to-day, would have to begin it again tomorrow.”
“Natural good is' so intimately connected with moral good, and natural evil with moral evil, that I am as certain as if I heard a voice from heaven proclaim it, that God is on the side of virtue. He has learnt much, and has not lived in vain, who has practically discovered that most strict and necessary connection, that does and will ever exist between vice and misery, and virtue and happiness.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“The plainest man that can convince a woman that he is really in love with her has done more to make her in love with him than the handsomest man, if he can produce no such conviction. For the love of woman is a shoot, not a seed, and flourishes most vigorously only when ingrafted on that love which is rooted in the breast of another.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words : Addressed to Those who Think
“There is a holy love and a holy rage, and our best virtues never glow so brightly as when our passions are excited in the cause. Sloth, if it has prevented many crimes, has also smothered many virtues; and the best of us are better when roused.”
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.”
“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
“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
“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!”
“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
“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
“If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“If it be true that men of strong imaginations are usually dogmatists--and I am inclined to think it is so--it ought to follow that men of weak imaginations are the reverse; in which case we should have some compensation for stupidity. But it unfortunately happens that no dogmatist is more obstinate or less open to conviction than a fool.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“If our eloquence be directed above the heads of our hearers, we shall do no execution. By pointing our arguments low, we stand a chance of hitting their hearts as well as their heads. In addressing angels, we could hardly raise our eloquence too high; but we must remember that men are not angels.”
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.”
“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
“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
