Anglo Irish Quotes

I row after health like a waterman.

The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time.

My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

Your notions of friendship are new to me; I believe every man is born with his quantum, and he cannot give to one without robbing another. I very well know to whom I would give the first place in my friendship, but they are not in the way, I am condemned to another scene, and therefore I distribute it in pennyworths to those about me, and who displease me least, and should do the same to my fellow prisoners if I were condemned to a jail.

No preacher is listened to but time, which gives us the same train and turn of thought that elder people have in vain tried to put into our heads before.

There is no vice which mankind carries to such wild extremes as that of avarice.

You must take the will for the deed.

Better belly burst than good liquor be lost.

It is pleasant to observe how free the present age is in laying taxes on the next. "Future ages shall talk of this; they shall be famous to all posterity;" whereas their time and thoughts will be taken up about present things, as ours are now.

Pray steal me not, I'm Mrs. Dingley's, Whose heart in this four-footed thing lies.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

The example alone of a vicious prince will corrupt an age; but that of a good one will not reform it.

Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.

No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience.

Ah, a German and a genius ! A prodigy, admit him !

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

Live every day as your last, because one of these days, it will be.

I would rather be a freeman among slaves than a slave among freemen.

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these. . .the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold.

Brisk talkers are generally slow thinkers.

A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart.

Faith, that's as well said as if I had said it myself.

Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting.

Punning is an art of harmonious jingling upon words, which, passing in at the ears, excites a titillary motion in those parts; and this, being conveyed by the animal spirits into the muscles of the face, raises the cockles of the heart.

Tis nothing when you are used to it.

If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.

Small causes are sufficient to make a man uneasy, when great ones are not in the way: for want of a block he will stumble at a straw.

Wise people are never less alone than when they are alone.

The motives of the best actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad, may be resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the great distinction between virtue and vice.

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

The worthiest people are the most injured by slander, as is the best fruit which the birds have been pecking at.

From not the gravest of Divines,Accept for once some serious Lines.

If the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would burn my Travels.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

In all distresses of our friends We first consult our private ends; While Nature, kindly bent to ease us, Points out some circumstance to please us.

Modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense.

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.

May you live all the days of your life.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

All human race would be wits. And millions miss, for one that hits.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

For want of a block, man will stumble at a straw.

Don't set your wit against a child.

Books, the children of the brain.

Common fluency of speech in many men and most women is owing to a scarcity of matter.

I cannot but conclude that the Bulk of your Natives, to be the most pernicious Race of little odious Vermin that Nature ever suffered to crawl upon the Surface of the Earth.

Men who possess all the advantages of life are in a state where there are many accidents to disorder and discompose, but few to please them.

A college joke to cure the dumps.

I hate nobody: I am in charity with the world.

Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.