44 quotes
Anglo-Irish satirist and essayist (1667–1745)
“When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.”
"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong which is but saying ... that he is wiser today than yesterday."
on Wisdom
"May you live all the days of your life."
on Life
"When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."
"An excuse is a lie guarded."
on Truth
"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."
on Ethics
"Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want."
"There's none so blind as they that won't see."
"No wise man ever wished to be younger."
"We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking."
on Education
"Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes."
on Ambition
"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience."
on Learning
"Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age."
on Creativity
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."
on Philosophy
"Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest persons uneasy is the best bred in the company."
"Most sorts of diversion in men children and other animals are in imitation of fighting."
"Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly."
"I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning."
on Success
"Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical."
on Culture
"Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly."
on Humor
"Promise and pie-crust are made to be broken."
