erson.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and orators, because he that
would obtrude his thoughts and reasons upon a multitude, will convince
others the more, as he appears convinced himself.
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice, when they
will not so much as take warning?
I forget whether Advice be among the lost things which Aristo says are to
be found in the moon; that and Time ought to have been there.
No preacher is listened to but Time, which gives us the same train and
turn of thought that older people have tried in vain to put into our
heads before.
When we desire or solicit anything, our minds run wholly on the good side
or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the
bad ones.
In a glass-house the workmen often fling in a small quantity of fresh
coals, which seems to disturb the fire, but very much enlivens it. This
seems to allude to a gentle stirring of the passions, that the mind may
not languish.
Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to
nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or languor;
it is like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.
The latter part of a wise man's life is taken up in curing the follies,
prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.
Would a writer know how to behave himself with relation to posterity, let
him consider in old books what he finds that he is glad to know, and what
omissions he most laments.
Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but
themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles
or AEneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are
taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little
regard the authors.
When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign;
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
Men who possess all the advantages of life, are in a state where there
are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.
It is unwise to punish cowards with ignominy, for if they had regarded
that they would not have been cowards; death is their proper punishment,
because they fear it most.
The greatest inventions were produced in the times of ignorance, as the
use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing, and by the dullest nation,
as
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