You think I love flattery (says Dr. Johnson), and so I do; but a little too much always disgusts me: that fellow Richardson, on the contrary, could not be contented to sail quietly down the stream of reputation, without longing to taste the froth from every stroke of the oar.
Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design.
It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.
There is little peace or comfort in life if we are always anxious as to future events. He that worries himself with the dread of possible contingencies will never be at rest.
No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.
As a madman is apt to think himself grown suddenly great, so he that grows suddenly great is apt to borrow a little from the madman.
Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.
Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.
Small debts are like small shot; they are rattling on every side, and can scarcely be escaped without a wound: great debts are like cannon; of loud noise, but little danger.
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.
A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.
Tears are often to be found where there is little sorrow, and the deepest sorrow without any tears.
It may be no less dangerous to claim, on certain occasions, too little than too much. There is something captivating in spirit and intrepidity, to which we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can we often yield as to a resistless power; nor can he reasonably expect the confidence of others who too apparently distrusts himself.
Some have little power to do good, and have likewise little strength to resist evil.
They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present.
The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.
Courtesy and good humor are often found with little real worth.
The superiority of some men is merely local. They are great because their associates are little.
When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am.
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.
He that pines with hunger, is in little care how others shall be fed. The poor man is seldom studious to make his grandson rich.
Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.
He who attempts to do all will waste his life in doing little.
Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.
I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little.
When once the forms of civility are violated, there remains little hope of return to kindness or decency.
This world, where much is to be done and little to be known.
Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.
Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility.
Every man's affairs, however little, are important to himself.
I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.
Those that have done nothing in life, are not qualified to judge of those that have done little
The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed.