“Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.”
“He who knows himself knows others.”
“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
