“In a debate, rather pull to pieces the argument of thy antagonists than offer him any of thy own; for thus thou wilt fight him in his own country.”

It is not enough that your designs, nay that your actions, are intrinsically good, you must take care they shall appear so.

A good countenance is a letter of recommendation.

A newspaper consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not.

We should not be too hasty in bestowing either our praise or censure on mankind, since we shall often find such a mixture of good and evil in the same character, that it may require a very accurate judgment and a very elaborate inquiry to determine on which side the balance turns.

A truly elegant taste is generally accompanied with excellency of heart.

It is much easier to make good men wise, than to make bad men good.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.

Dancing begets warmth, which is the parent of wantonness. It is, Sir, the great grandfather of cuckoldom.

Wicked companions invite us to hell.

To the composition of novels and romances, nothing is necessary but paper, pens, and ink, with the manual capacity of using them.

It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

He grew weary of this condescension, and began to treat the opinions of his wife with that haughtiuess and insolence, which none but those who deserve some contempt themselves can bestow, and those only who deserve no contempt can bear.

Domestic happiness is the end of almost all our pursuits, and the common reward of all our pains. When men find themselves forever barred from this delightful fruition, they are lost to all industry, and grow careless of all their worldly affairs. Thus they become bad subjects, bad relations, bad friends, and bad men.

Money is the fruit of evil, as often as the root of it.

We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.

O innocence, how glorious and happy a portion art thou to the breast that possesses thee! thou fearest neither the eyes nor the tongues of men. Truth, the most powerful of all things, is thy strongest friend; and the brighter the light is in which thou art displayed, the more it discovers thy transcendent beauties.

It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.

Empty is the argument of the philosopher which does not relieve any human suffering.

Humanity is in the highest degree irrational, so that there is no prospect of influencing it by reasonable arguments. Against prejudice one can do nothing.

Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument.

I’m sorry to say that the subject I most disliked was mathematics. I have thought about it. I think the reason was that mathematics leaves no room for argument. If you made a mistake, that was all there was to it.

Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side’s claims.

Bigot – A person who wins an argument with a liberal.