Inconvenience

When we have to change our mind about a person, we hold the inconvenience he causes us very much against him.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

The Puritan

A Puritan is a diseased piece of Apocrypha; bind him to the Bible, and he corrupts the whole text; ignorance and fat feed are his founders; his nurses railing, rabies, and round breeches; his life is but a borrowed blast of wind; for between two religions, as between two doors, he is ever whistling; for willingly his faith allows no father; only thus his pedigree is found.

- Sir Thomas Overbury

Honor of a Nation

Can there be in our age any peace that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable? The true honor of a nation is conspicuous only in deeds of justice and beneficence, securing and advancing human happiness.

- Charles Sumner

Opinion

Opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.

-John Milton

On a Tavern.

To give you the total reckoning of it; it is the busy man's recreation, the idle man's business, the melancholy man's sanctuary, the stranger's welcome, the inns-a-court man's entertainment, the scholar's kindness, and the citizen's courtesy. It is the study of sparkling wits, and a cup of sherry their book.

- John Earle

Pomp and Power

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
All that beauty e'er gave
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

-Thomas Gray

Tradition

When ancient opinions and rules of life are taken away, the loss cannot possibly be estimated. From that moment we have no compass to govern us; nor can we know distinctly to what port we steer.

- Edmund Burke

Undue Haste

There are a great many people who really believe in answering letters the day they are received, just as there are people who go to the movies at 9 o'clock in the morning; but these people are stunted and queer.

It is a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away a great deal of the pleasure of correspondence.

- Christopher Morley

Character

A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza - read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Fool

As long as the evil deed does not bear fruit, the fool thinks it is like honey; but when it ripens, then the fool suffers grief.

- The Dhammapada

Greed

The covetous man defrauds not only other men, but his own genius: he cheats himself for money.

-Abraham Cowley

Patriotism

The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice-always has been.

-Mark Twain

Accused

The form of a charge runs thus: I accuse in the name of all the Commons of England. How then can any man be as a witness, when everyman is made the accuser?

-John Seldon

Rhyme nor Reason

I was promis'd on a time.
To have reason for my rhyme:
From that time unto this season,
I receiv'd not rhyme nor reason.

-Edmund Spenser

Pride

Of all the curses which conspire to blind
Man's erring judgement, and misguide the mind,
What the weak head with strongest bias rules
Is Pride, the never failing vice of fools.

-Pope

Language

Language most shows a man: Speak that I might see thee. No glass renders a man's form or likeness so true as his speech. Nay, it is likened to a man; and as we consider feature and composition in a man, so words in language; in the greatness, aptness, sound structure, and harmony of it.

-Ben Johnson

Time

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

-Marcus Aurelius

Intellect

The greater intellect one has, the more originality one finds in men. Ordinary persons find no difference in men.

-Pascal

Fancy

It is the most boundless and restless faculty of the soul: for whilst the understanding and the will are kept as it were in libera custodia to their objects... the fancy is free from all engagements; it digs without a spade, sails without ship, flies without wings, builds without charges, fights without bloodshed, in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of omnipotency creating and annihilating things in an instant.

-Thomas Fuller

Body and Soul

At feasts, remember that you are entertaining two guests, body and soul. What you give to the body, you presently lose; what you give to the soul, you keep forever.

-Epictetus

The Importance of Definitions

A man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he useth stands for, and place it accordingly, or else he will find himself entangled in words as a bird in lime twigs - the more he struggles, the more enlimed.

-Thomas Hobbes

Marriage

Marriage is a desperate thing. The frogs in Aesop were extreme wise; they had a great mind to some water, but they would not leap into the well, because they could not get out again.

- John Seldon

Ambition and Glory

If we seek a reason of the succession and continuance of this boundless ambition in mortal men we may add...that the kings and princes of the world have always laid before them the actions but not the ends of those great ones which preceded them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but they never mind the misery of the other till they find the experience in themselves. They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life, or hope; but they follow the counsel of Death upon his first approach.

-Sir Walter Raleigh