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Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.
Jonathan Swift
If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel.
Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.
A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday.
Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.
Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
May you live all the days of your life.
Where I am not understood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profound is couched underneath.
The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier.
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.
One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding.
Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.
Don't set your wit against a child.
Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want.
Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder.
As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold.
Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.
Observation is an old man's memory.
Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced.
There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.
No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.
Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent.
Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.
He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
Books, the children of the brain.
We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.
Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of.
Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth.
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.
I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.
Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.
My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.
I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution.
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.
Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.