A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

As the French say, there are three sexes - men, women, and clergymen.

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

He has spent all his life in letting down empty buckets into empty wells; and he is frittering away his age in trying to draw them up again.

No furniture so charming as books.

Life is to be fortified by many friendships. To love, and to be loved, is the greatest happiness of existence. If I lived under the burning sun of the equator, it would be a pleasure to me to think that there were many human beings on the other side of the world who regarded and respected me; I could and would not live if I were alone upon the earth, and cut off from the remembrance of my fellow-creatures. It is not that a man has occasion often to fall back upon the kindness of his friends; perhaps he may never experience the necessity of doing so; but we are governed by our imaginations, and they stand there as a solid and impregnable bulwark against all the evils of life.

Let every man be occupied, and occupied in the highest employment of which his nature is capable, and die with the consciousness that he has done his best.

The fox, when caught, is worth nothing: he is followed for the pleasure of following.

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory: nothing so expensive as glory.

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.

To take Macaulay out of literature and society and put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London during a pestilence.

Live always in the best company when you read.

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach.

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;-"Damn the solar system! bad light - planets too distant - pestered with comets - feeble contriviance; - could make a better with great ease."

We know nothing of tomorrow; our business is to be good and happy today.

I am old, but I certainly have not that sign of old age, extolling the past at the expense of the present.

You remember Thurlow's answer to some one complaining of the injustice of a company. "Why, you never expected justice from a company, did you? they have neither a soul to lose, nor a body to kick."

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

Every rock in the ocean where a cormorant can perch is occupied by our troops - has a governor, deputy-governor, storekeeper, and deputy-storekeeper - and will soon have an archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, with thirty-four professors, educating seventeen ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for each professor, with every species of nonsense, athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous.

The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.

Great men hallow a whole people and lift up all who live in their time.

In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book? Or goes to an American play? or looks at an American picture or statue? What does the world yet owe to American physicians or surgeons? What new substances have their chemists discovered? Or what old ones have they advanced? What new constellations have been discovered by the telescopes of Americans? Who drinks out of American glasses? Or eats from American plates? Or wears American coats or gowns? or sleeps in American blankets? Finally, under which of the old tyrannical governments of Europe is every sixth man a slave, whom his fellow-creatures may buy and sell and torture?

I do not mean to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm at Sidmouth, and of the conduct of the excellent Mrs Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824 there set in a great flood upon that town - the tide rose to an incredible height - the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime and terrible storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused; Mrs. Partington's spirit was up. But I need not tell you that the contest was unequal.

It is true that every increase of knowledge may possibly render depravity more depraved, as well as it may increase the strength of virtue. It is in itself only power; and its value depends on its application.

In fact, when a nation has become free, it is extremely difficult to persuade them that their freedom is only to be preserved by perpetual and minute jealousy. They do not observe that there is a constant, perhaps an unconscious, effort on the part of their governors to diminish, and so ultimately to destroy, that freedom.

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.

But now persecution is good, because it exists; every law which originated in ignorance and malice, and gratifies the passions from whence it sprang, we call the wisdom of our ancestors: when such laws are repealed, they will be cruelty and madness; till they are repealed, they are policy and caution.

It is the safest to be moderately base - to be flexible in shame, and to be always ready for what is generous, good, and just, when anything is to be gained by virtue.

Dean Swift's rule is as good for women as for men - never to talk above a half minute without pausing, and giving others an opportunity to strike in.

Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.

The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority, are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained after his time, but mind - which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume, in 1737.

My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.

He not only overflowed with learning but stood in the slops.

I never read a book before reviewing it: it prejudices a man so.

When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.