The confession of our failings is a thankless office. It savours less of sincerity or modesty than of ostentation. It seems as if ...we thought our weaknesses as good as other people's virtues.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No wise man can have a contempt for the prejudices of others; and he should even stand in a certain awe of his own, as if they wer...e aged parents and monitors. They may in the end prove wiser than he.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mankind are an incorrigible race. Give them but bugbears and idols--it is all that they ask; the distinctions of right and wrong, ...of truth and falsehood, of good and evil, are worse than indifferent to them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I hate to be near the sea, and to hear it roaring and raging like a wild beast in its den. It puts me in mind of the everlasting e...fforts of the human mind, struggling to be free, and ending just where it began.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We are the creatures of imagination, passion, and self- will, more than of reason or even of self-interest.... Even in the common ...transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident. The falling of a teacup puts us out of temper for the day; and a quarrel that commenced about the pattern of a gown may end only with our lives.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »