The triumph of hope over experience. (on a second marriage)
Samuel Johnson Quotes
Where there is no hope there can be no endeavor.
The known shortness of life, as it ought to moderate our passions, may likewise, with equal propriety, contract our designs. There is not time for the most forcible genius, and most active industry, to extend its effect beyond a certain sphere. To project the conquest of the world is the madness of mighty princes; to […]
Nothing is ended with honour which does not conclude better than it began.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition; the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
It is… at home that every man must be known by those who would make a just estimate either of his virtue or felicity; for smiles and embroidery are alike occasional, and the mind is often for show in painted honor and fictitious benevolence.
Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.
The present state of things is the consequence of the former, and it is natural to enquire what were the sources of the good that we enjoy, or the evil that we suffer. If we act only for ourselves, to neglect the study of history is not prudent: if we are intrusted with the care […]
The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed, and hopes that have been disappointed.
The history of mankind informs us that a single power is very seldom broken by a confederacy. States of different interests, and aspects malevolent to each other, may be united for a time by common distress; and in the ardour of self-preservation fall unanimously upon an enemy, by whom they are all equally endangered. But […]
