Men first make up their minds (and the smaller the mind the sooner made up), and then seek for the reasons; and if they chance to stumble upon a good reason, of course they do not reject it. But though they are right, they are only right by chance.
When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.
Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.
Man is naturally more desirous of a quiet and approving, than of a vigilant and tender conscience--more desirous of security than of safety.
Party spirit enlists a man's virtues in the cause of his vices.
That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
The happiest lot for a man, as far as birth is concerned, is that it should be such as to give him but little occasion to think much about it.
It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
Do you want to know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking-glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.
Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.
Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.
In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.
Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.
When a man says he wants to work, what he means is that he wants wages.
Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business.
A man will never change his mind if he have no mind to change.
Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
It is not that pearls fetch a high price because men have dived for them; but on the contrary, men have dived for them because they fetch a high price.
The censure of frequent and long parentheses has led writers into the preposterous expedient of leaving out the marks by which they are indicated. It is no cure to a lame man to take away his crutches.
Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.
Woman is like the reed which bends to every breeze, but breaks not in the tempest.
Reason can no more influence the will, and operate as a motive, than the eyes which show a man his road can enable him to move from place to place, or that a ship provided with a compass can sail without a wind.
Vices and frailties correct each other, like acids and alkalies. If each vicious man had but one vice, I do not know how the world could go on.
It is generally true that all that is required to make men unmindful of what they owe to God for any blessing, is, that they should receive that blessing often and regularly.
A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.
Manners are one of the greatest engines of influence ever given to man.
Weak arguments are often thrust before my path; but although they are most insubstantial, it is not easy to destroy them. There is not a more difficult feat known than to cut through a cushion with a sword.
All men wish to have truth on their side; but few to be on the side of truth.
Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry always gets the best of the argument.