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Notes If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from
his youth and so go on to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would
appear at last! What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not we are told expressly:
that they neither marry, nor are given in marriage.
It is a miserable thing to live in suspense; it is the life of a spider. The Stoical scheme of supplying
our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not
admitted to be jurors upon life and death. The reason why so few marriages are happy, is, because
young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
If a man will observe as he walks the streets, I believe he will find the merriest countenances in
mourning coaches. Nothing more unqualifies a man to act with prudence than a misfortune that
is attended with shame and guilt.
The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable; for the happy impute all their success to
prudence or merit. Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices; so climbing is
performed in the same posture with creeping. Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being
eminent.
Although men are accused for not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps as few know their
own strength. It is, in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner
knows not of.
Satire is reckoned the easiest of all wit, but I take it to be otherwise in very bad times: for it is as
hard to satirise well a man of distinguished vices, as to praise well a man of distinguished virtues.
It is easy enough to do either to people of moderate characters.
Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age; so that our judgment grows harder to please,
when we have fewer things to offer it: this goes through the whole commerce of life. When we are
old, our friends find it difficult to please us, and are less concerned whether we be pleased or no.
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before. The motives of the best
actions will not bear too strict an inquiry. It is allowed that the cause of most actions, good or bad,
may he resolved into the love of ourselves; but the self-love of some men inclines them to please
others, and the self-love of others is wholly employed in pleasing themselves. This makes the
great distinction between virtue and vice. Religion is the best motive of all actions, yet religion is
allowed to be the highest instance of self-love.
Old men view best at a distance with the eyes of their understanding as well as with those of
nature. Some people take more care to hide their wisdom than their folly.
Anthony Henley’s farmer, dying of an asthma, said, “Well, if I can get this breath once OUT, I’ll
take care it never got in again.” The humour of exploding many things under the name of trifles,
fopperies, and only imaginary goods, is a very false proof either of wisdom or magnanimity, and
a great check to virtuous actions. For instance, with regard to fame, there is in most people a
reluctance and unwillingness to be forgotten. We observe, even among the vulgar, how fond they
are to have an inscription over their grave. It requires but little philosophy to discover and observe
that there is no intrinsic value in all this; however, if it be founded in our nature as an incitement
to virtue, it ought not to be ridiculed.
Complaint is the largest tribute heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion. The
common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter, and
a scarcity of words; for whoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt,
in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both; whereas common speakers have only one set of
ideas, and one set of words to clothe them in, and these are always ready at the mouth. So people
come faster out of a church when it is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.

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