“It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths, as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men, they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Avarice has ruined more men than prodigality, and the blindest thoughtlessness of expenditure has not destroyed so many fortunes as the calculating but insatiable lust of accumulation.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“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
“Brutes leave ingratitude to man.”
“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 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.
“Man is an embodied paradox, a bundle of contradictions.”
“The most consistent men are not more unlike to others, than they are at times to themselves.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Were the life of man prolonged, he would become such a proficient in villainy, that it would become necessary again to drown or to burn the world. Earth would become an hell; for future rewards when put off to a great distance, would cease to encourage, and future punishments to alarm.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Love is a volcano, the crater of which no wise man will approach too nearly, lest ... he should be swallowed up.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“When a man has displayed talent in some particular path, and left all competitors behind him in it, the world are too apt to give him credit for universality of genius, and to anticipate for him success in all that he undertakes.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Some men of a secluded and studious life, have sent forth from their closet or their cloister, rays of intellectual light that have agitated courts, and revolutionized kingdoms; like the moon, that far removed from the ocean, and shining upon it with a serene and sober light, is the chief cause of all those ebbings and flowings which incessantly disturb that world of waters.”
“There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“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
“The plainest man who pays attention to women, will sometimes succeed as well as the handsomest man who does not.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a 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
“Many a man may thank his talent for his rank, but no man has ever been able to return the compliment by thanking his rank for his talent.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“When the air balloon was first discovered, some one flippantly asked Dr. Franklin what was the use of it. The doctor answered this question by asking another: "What is the use of a new-born infant? It may become a man."”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“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
“We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Any one can give advice, such as it is, but only a wise man knows how to profit by it.”
“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
“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.”
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Duke Chartres used to boast that no man could have less real value for character than himself, yet he would gladly give twenty thousand pounds for a good one, because he could immediately make double that sum by means of it.”
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.
“There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs.”
“Some men who know that they are great are so very haughty withal and insufferable that their acquaintance discover their greatness only by the tax of humility which they are obliged to pay as the price of their friendship.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.”
Source: Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“Happiness is much more equally divided than some of us imagine. One man shall possess most of the materials, but little of the thing; another may possess much of the thing, but very few of the material. In this particular view of it, happiness had been beautifully compared to the man in the desert--he that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.”
“It is much easier to ruin a man of principle than a man of none, for he may be ruined through his scruples. Knavery is supple and can bend; but honesty is firm and upright, and yields not.”
Source: Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan
“It is with honesty in one particular as with wealth,--those that have the thing care less about the credit of it than those who have it not. No poor man can well afford to be thought so, and the less of honesty a finished rogue possesses the less he can afford to be supposed to want it.”
Source: Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think
“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
“Like the rainbow, peace rests upon the earth, but its arch is lost in heaven. Heaven bathes it in hues of light--it springs up amid tears and clouds--it is a reflection of the eternal sun--it is an assurance of calm--it is the sign of a great covenant between God and man--it is an emanation from the distant orb of immortal light.”
“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.”
“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
“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!”
“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
“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
