HENRY HOME

Luxury may possibly contribute to give bread to the poor; but if there were no luxury, there would be no poor.

The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others lives unblest!

The difficulty is not that great to die for a friend, the hard part is finding a friend worth dying for.

Violent passions are formed in solitude. In the busy world no object has time to make a deep impression.

A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.

The gentle and insinuating manners of the female sex tend to soften the roughness of the other sex.

A relation is formed betwixt every man and the fruits of his own labour, the very thing we call property, which he himself is sensible of, and of which every other is equally sensible. Yours and mine are terms in all languages, familiar among savages, and understood even by children. This is a fact, which every human creature can testify.

Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

A great mind will neither give an affront nor bear it.

Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.

The indulgence of revenge tends to make men more savage and cruel.

Beauty loses its relish; the graces never.

We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.

Emotions are raised in us, not only by the qualities and actions of others, but also by their feelings. I cannot behold a man in distress, without partaking of his pain; nor in joy, without partaking of his pleasure.

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little headstrong.

The mind is never more highly gratified than in contemplating a natural landscape.

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands.

Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

Such is the power of imagination, that even a chimerical pleasure in expectation affects us more than a solid pleasure in possession.

Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. Behold us already more than half dead and buried.

Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.

When you descant on the faults of others, consider whether you be not guilty of the same. To gain knowledge of ourselves, the best way is to convert the imperfections of others into a mirror for discovering our own.

As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship.