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| Circumstances are things round about; we are in them, not under them. | 1 |
| A great man is he who can call together the most select company when it pleases him. | 2 |
| Circumstances form the character, but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form. | 3 |
| Clear writers, like clear fountains, do not seem so deep as they are; the turbid look the most profound. | 4 |
| Consult duty, not events. | 5 |
| Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than it is the cure of sufferings. | 6 |
| Delay of justice is injustice. | 7 |
| Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilise the land they are cast upon. | 8 |
| Despotism sits nowhere so secure as under the effigy and ensigns of freedom. | 9 |
| Every good writer has much idiom; it is the life and spirit of language. | 10 |
| Every great writer is a writer of history, let him treat on almost what subject he may. He carries with him for thousands of years a portion of his times; and, indeed, if only his own effigy were there, it would be greatly more than a fragment of his century. | 11 |
| Everything that looks to the future elevates human nature; for never is life so low as when occupied with the present. | 12 |
| Fancy is imagination in her youth and adolescence. | 13 |
| Friendship is a vase, which, when it is flawed by heat, or violence, or accident, may as well be broken at once; it never can be trusted after. | 14 |
| Great men lose somewhat of their greatness by being near us; ordinary men gain much. | 15 |
| Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for. | 16 |
| Great men will always pay deference to greater. | 17 |
| Greatness, as we daily see it, is unsociable. | 18 |
| Happiness is like the statue of Isis, whose veil no mortal ever raised. | 19 |
| If there were no falsehood in the world, there would be no doubt; if no doubt, no inquiry; and if no inquiry, no wisdom, no knowledge, no genius. | 20 |
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| Kindness in us is the honey that blunts the sting of unkindness in another. | 21 |
| Life is a casket, not precious in itself, but valuable in proportion to what fortune, or industry, or virtue has placed within it. | 22 |
| Love is a secondary passion in those who love most, a primary in those who love least. He who is inspired by it in a high degree is inspired by honour in a higher; it never reaches its plenitude of growth and perfection but in the most exalted minds. | 23 |
| Mind and body—that beauteous couple—exercise much and variously, but at home, at home, indoors, and about things indoors; for God is there too. | 24 |
| Modesty when she goes, is gone for ever. | 25 |
| Moroseness is the evening of turbulence. | 26 |
| No ashes are lighter than those of incense, and few things burn out sooner. | 27 |
| No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable. | 28 |
| Nor sequent centuries could hit / Orbit and sum of Shakespeare’s wit. | 29 |
| Nothing is so grand as truth, nothing so forcible, nothing so novel. | 30 |
| On a winged word hath hung the destiny of nations. | 31 |
| Religion is the eldest sister of philosophy; on whatever subjects they may differ, it is unbecoming in either to quarrel, and most so about their inheritance. | 32 |
| Songs may exist unsung, but voices exist only when they sound. | 33 |
| Study is the bane of boyhood, the element of youth, the indulgence of manhood, and the restorative of age. | 34 |
| The bird of wisdom flies low, and seeks her food under hedges; the eagle himself would be starved if he always soared aloft and against the sun. | 35 |
| The happy man is he who distinguishes the boundary between desires and delight, and stands firmly on the higher ground. | 36 |
| The religion of Christ is peace and goodwill, that of Christendom war and ill-will. | 37 |
| The stars themselves are only bright by distance; go close, and all is earthy; but vapours illuminate there; from the breath and from the countenance of God comes light on worlds higher than they. | 38 |
| The sublime is in a grain of dust. | 39 |
| The tomb is the pedestal of greatness. | 40 |
| Those who are quite satisfied sit still and do nothing; those who are not quite satisfied are the sole benefactors of the world. | 41 |
| Truth, like the juice of a poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in its excess. | 42 |
| We are contented because we are happy, and not happy because we are contented. | 43 |
| We cannot conquer fate and necessity, yet we can yield to them in such a manner as to be greater than if we could. | 44 |
| We fancy we suffer from ingratitude, while in reality we suffer from self-love. | 45 |
| We talk on principle, but we act on interest. | 46 |
| Wearers of rings and chains! / Pray do not take the pains / To set me right. / In vain my faults ye quote; / I write as others wrote / On Sunium’s height. | 47 |
| Where power is absent we may find the robe of genius, but we miss the throne. | 48 |
| Women, like the plants in woods, derive their softness and tenderness from the shade. | 49 |
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