Men often prove the violence of their own prejudices, even by the violence with which they attack the prejudices of other people.

We confess our faults in the plural, and deny them in the singular.

One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.

Man seems to be made neither to live alone nor with others.

Respect is better procured by exacting than soliciting it.

We are oftener deceived by being told some truth than no truth.

Though love and hatred are as opposites as fire and water, yet do they sometimes subsist in the breast together towards the same person; nay by their very opposition and desire to destroy each other, are they strengthened and increased.

Every character is in some respects uniform, and in others inconsistent; and it is only by the study both of the uniformity and inconsistency, and a comparison of them with each other, that the knowledge of man is acquired.

No two things can be so contradictory, so much at variance as truth and falsehood; and yet none are so mixed and united.

Two men are equally free from the rage of ambition; are they therefore equal in merit? Perhaps not; one may be above ambition, the other below it.

Our present evil is generally thought the worst of our evils, and all our own evils worse than other peoples.

"Truth will prevail." It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work.

We are not slow at discovering the selfishness of others; for this plain reason--because it clashes with our own.

The great reason why false virtues pass so well in the world is, that true ones are so seldom near to compare them with.

Politics is the food of sense exposed to the hunger of folly.

You deny that man is really so prejudiced as I suppose him; talk to him then of some foreign country, ask him what religion he is of.

The criterion of true beauty is, that it increases on examination; of false, that it lessens. There is something therefore in true beauty that corresponds with right reason, and is not merely a creature of fancy.

One great reason why men practice generosity so little in the world, is, their finding so little there: generosity is catching; and if so many men escape it, it is in a great degree from the same reason that country-men escape the smallpox, because they meet no one to give it to them.

Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

Might not most men be as well named boys grown old.

It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little; a great deal may rouze you to remove, what a little will only accustom you to endure.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder, upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling: if you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in, or out of a door, has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

It is, methinks, worthy the curiosity of a nice observer of human nature, to watch the course of a principle in the mind, and mark its various effects; now cherishing a virtue, now a vice; now establishing order, and now inclining to irregularity: to trace it like a stream from a source, through all its windings; each of which, those who see but a part, distinguish by a different name, and suppose to be fed by a different spring.

Even honest men mistake oftener in their own favor than in other peoples.

Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.