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Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.
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The two maxims of any great man at court are, always to keep his countenance, and never to keep his word.
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Praise is the daughter of present power.
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No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.
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He that calls a man ungrateful sums up all the veil that a man can be guilty of.
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Hereditary right should be kept sacred, not from any inalienable right in a particular family, but to avoid the consequences that usually attend the ambition of competitors.
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It is not so much the being exempt from faults as the having overcome them that is an advantage to us; it being with the follies of the mind as with weeds of a field, which if destroyed and consumed upon the place where they grow, enrich and improve it more than if none had ever sprung there.
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No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.
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Religion seems to have grown an infant with age, and requires miracles to nurse it, as it had in its infancy.
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That was excellently observed’, say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken.
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Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.
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Come hither, all ye empty things, Ye bubbles rais'd by breath of Kings; Who float upon the tide of state, Come hither, and behold your fate. Let pride be taught by this rebuke, How very mean a thing's a Duke; From all his ill-got honours flung, Turn'd to that dirt from whence he sprung.
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Simplicity, without which no human performance can arrive at perfection.
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There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof, I hope, there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am not understood, it shall be concluded, that something very useful and profound is couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentence is printed in a different character, shall be judged to contain something extraordinary either or wit of sublime.
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A favor is half granted, when graciously refused.
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Polite Conversation Why, everyone one as they like; as the good woman said when she kissed her cow.
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Just get the right syllable in the proper place.
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He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.
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Atlas, we read in ancient song, Was so exceeding tall and strong, He bore the skies upon his back, Just as the pedler does his pack; But, as the pedler overpress'd Unloads upon a stall to rest, Or, when he can no longer stand, Desires a friend to lend a hand, So Atlas, lest the ponderous spheres Should sink, and fall about his ears, Got Hercules to bear the pile, That he might sit and rest awhile.
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Fools are apt to imitate only the defects of their betters.
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When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.
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... the atheists, libertines, despisers of religion ... that is to say all those who usually pass under the name of Free-thinkers.
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Undoubtedly, philosophers are in the right when they tell us that nothing is great or little otherwise than by comparison.
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Had Windham possessed discretion in debate, or Sheridan in conduct, they might have ruled their age.