James Burgh quotes

In the midst of mirth, reflect that many of your fellow creatures round the world are expiring; and that your turn will come shortly. So will you keep your life uniform and free from excess.

There is no method more likely to cure passion and rashness, than the frequent and attentive consideration of one's own weaknesses: this will work into the mind an habitual sense of the need one has of being pardoned, and will bring down the swelling pride and obstinacy of heart, which are the cause of hasty passion.

There is hardly any bodily blemish which a winning behaviour will not conceal, or make tolerable; and there is no external grace which ill-nature or affectation will not deform.

There is an affected humility more unsufferable than downright pride, as hypocrisy is more abominable than libertimsm. Take care that your virtues be genuine and unsophisticated.

He who knows the world will not be too bashful. He who knows himself will not be impudent.

In disputes upon moral or scientific points, ever let your aim be to come at truth, not to conquer your opponent: so you never shall be at a loss in losing the argument, and gaining a new discovery.

If you mean to make your side of the argument appear plausible, do not prejudice the people against what you think truth by your passionate manner of defending it.

What may be very entertaining in company with ignorant people may be tiresome to those who know more of the matter.

Value truth, however you come by it. Who would not pick up a jewel that lay on a dunghill?

If you would have a right to account of things from illiterate people, let them tell their story in their own way; if you put them upon talking according to logical rules, you will confound them.

If you give a jest, take one.
Let all your jokes be truly jokes. Jesting sometimes ends in sad earnest.

All lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun: native, original, inherent, and unlimited by anything human. In governors it may be compared to the reflected light of the moon, for it is only borrowed, delegated, and limited by the intention of the people; whose it is, and to whom governors are to consider themselves aa responsible, while the people are answerable only to God; — themselves being the losers, if they pursue a false scheme of politics.

Praise your friends, and let your friends praise you.

If there be, in any region of the universe, an order of moral agents living in society, whose reason is strong, whose passions and inclinations are moderate, and whose dispositions are turned to virtue, to such an order of happy beings, legislation, administration, and police, with the endlessly various and complicated apparatus of politics, must be in a great measure superfluous. Did reason govern mankind, there would be little occasion for any other government, either monarchical, aristocratical, democratical, or mixed. But man, whom we dignify with the honourable title of Rational, being much more frequently influenced, in his proceedings, by supposed interest, by passion, by sensual appetite, by caprice, by any thing, by nothing, than by reason; it has, in all civilized ages and countries, been found proper to frame laws and statutes fortified by sanctions, and to establish orders of men invested with authority to execute those laws, and inflict the deserved punishments upon the violators of them. By such means only has it been found possible to preserve the general peace and tranquillity. But, such is the perverse disposition of man, the most unruly of all animals, that this most useful institution has been generally debauched into an engine of oppression and tyranny over those, whom it was expresly and solely established to defend. And to such a degree has this evil prevailed, that in almost every age and country, the government has been the principal grievance of the people, as appears too dreadfully manifest, from the bloody and deformed page of history. For what is general history, but a view of the abuses of power committed by those, who have got it into their hands, to the subjugation, and destruction of the human species, to the ruin of the general peace and happiness, and turning the Almighty's fair and good world into a butchery of its inhabitants, for the gratification of the unbounded ambition of a few, who, in overthrowing the felicity of their fellow-creatures, have confounded their own?

There is no occasion to trample upon the meanest reptile, nor to sneak to the greatest prince. Insolence and baseness are equally unmanly.

Deep learning will make you acceptable to the learned; but it is only an obliging and easy behaviour, and entertaining conversation, that will make you agreeable to all companies.

Do not endeavour to shine in all companies. Leave room for your hearers to imagine something within you beyond all you have said. And remember, the more you are praised, the more you will be envied.

Wit without humanity degenerates into bitterness. Learning without prudence into pedantry.

If a great person has omitted rewarding your services, do not talk of it; perhaps he may not yet have had an opportunity, for they have always on hand expectants innumerable, and the clamorous are too generally gratified before the deserving; besides, it is the way to draw his displeasure upon you, which can do you no good, but make bad worse. If the services you did were voluntary, you ought not to expect any return, because you made a present of them unasked; and a free gift is not to be turned into a loan, to draw the person you have served into debt. If you have served a great person merely with a view to self-interest, perhaps he is aware of that, and rewards you accordingly: nor can you justly complain: he owes you nothing; it was not him you meant to serve.

Be sure of the fact before you lose time in searching for a cause.