The true barbarian is he who thinks everything barbarous but his own tastes and prejudices.

We are very much what others think of us. The reception our observations meet with gives us courage to proceed, or damps our efforts.

The soul of a journey is liberty, perfect liberty, to think, feel, do just as one pleases.

There are few things in which we deceive ourselves more than in the esteem we profess to entertain for our firends. It is little better than a piece of quackery. The truth is, we think of them as we please, that is, as they please or displease us.

To think ill of mankind and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it.

Dr. Johnson was a lazy learned man who liked to think and talk better than to read or write; who, however, wrote much and well, but too often by rote.

No young man ever thinks he shall die.

To get others to come into our ways of thinking, we must go over to theirs; and it is necessary to follow, in order to lead.

It [will-making] is the latest opportunity we have of exercising the natural perversity of the disposition ... This last act of our lives seldom belies the former tenor of them for stupidity, caprice, and unmeaning spite. All that we seem to think of is to manage matters so (in settling accounts with those who are so unmannerly as to survive us) as to do as little good, and to plague and disappoint as many people, as possible.

Natural affection is a prejudice; for though we have cause to love our nearest connections better than others, we have no reason to think them better than others.

However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us through the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean. To know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effect on other minds.

In love we do not think of moral qualities, and scarcely of intellectual ones. Temperament and manner alone, with beauty, excite love.

A knave thinks himself a fool, all the time he is not making a fool of some other person.

The idea of what the public will think prevents the public from ever thinking at all, and acts as a spell on the exercise of private judgment.

We do not attend to the advice of the sage and experienced because we think they are old, forgetting that they once were young and placed in the same situations as ourselves.

In public speaking, we must appeal either to the prejudices of others, or to the love of truth and justice. If we think merely of displaying our own ability, we shall ruin every cause we undertake.

The best way to make ourselves agreeable to others is by seeming to think them so. If we appear fully sensible of their good qualities they will not complain of the want of them in us.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

The best kind of conversation is that which may be called thinking aloud.

Envy is the most universal passion. We only pride ourselves on the qualities we possess, or think we possess; but we envy the pretensions we have, and those which we have not, and do not even wish for. We envy the greatest qualities and every trifling advantage. We envy the most ridiculous appearance or affectation of superiority. We envy folly and conceit; nay, we go so far as to envy whatever confers distinction of notoriety, even vice and infamy.

It is only those who never think at all, or else who have accustomed themselves to blood invariably on abstract ideas, that ever feel ennui.

There cannot be a surer proof of low origin, or of an innate meanness of disposition, than to be always talking and thinking of being genteel.

We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it. This is the reason why it is so difficult for any but natives to speak a language correctly or idiomatically.

No man would, I think, exchange his existence with any other man, however fortunate. We had as lief not be, as not be ourselves.

I do not think there is anything deserving the name of society to be found out of London.

The difference between the vanity of a Frenchman and an Englishman seems to be this: the one thinks everything right that is French, the other thinks everything wrong that is not English.

Give me the clear blue sky over my head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and a three hours' march to dinner - and then to thinking! ... I begin to feel, think, and be myself again. Instead of an awkward silence, broken by attempts at wit or dull common-places, mine is that undisturbed silence of the heart which alone is perfect eloquence.

I do not think that what is called Love at first sight is so great an absurdity as it is sometimes imagined to be. We generally make up our minds beforehand to the sort of person we should like, grave or gay, black, brown, or fair; with golden tresses or raven locks; - and when we meet with a complete example of the qualities we admire, the bargain is soon struck.

The most insignificant people are the most apt to sneer at others. They are safe from reprisals. And have no hope of rising in their own self esteem but by lowering their neighbors.

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering other people's weaknesses.

Some people break promises for the pleasure of breaking them.

People of genius do not excel in any profession because they work in it, they work in it because they excel.

There are two classes of people that I have observed who are not so distinct as might be imagined -- those who cannot keep their own money in their hands, and those who cannot keep their hands from other people's.

An indigestion is an excellent common-place for two people that never met before.

It is surely a distinct question, what you can persuade people to do by argument and fair discussion, and what you may lawfully compel them to do, when reason and remonstrance fail.

If we use no ceremony toward others, we shall be treated without any. People are soon tired of paying trifling attentions to those who receive them with coldness, and return them with neglect.

When the imagination is continually led to the brink of vice by a system of terror and denunciations, people fling themselves over the precipice from the mere dread of falling.

It has been the resolution of mankind in all ages of the world. No people, no age, ever threw away the fruits of past wisdom, or the enjoyment of present blessings, for visionary schemes of ideal perfection. It is the knowledge of the past, the actual infliction of the present, that has produced all changes, all innovations, and all improvements - not (as is pretended) the chimerical anticipation of possible advantages, but the intolerable pressure of long-established, notorious, aggravated, and growing abuses.

People addicted to secrecy are so without knowing why; they are not so for cause, but for secrecy's sake.

People do not seem to talk for the sake of expressing their opinions, but to maintain an opinion for the sake of talking.

Wit is the rarest quality to be met with among people of education, and the most common among the uneducated.

The most silent people are generally those who think most highly of themselves.

Common sense, to most people, is nothing more than their own opinions.

Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.

I maintain that there is no common language or medium of understanding between people of education and without it - between those who judge of things from books or from their senses. Ignorance has so far the advantage over learning; for it can make an appeal to you from what you know; but you cannot re-act upon it through that which it is a perfect stranger to. Ignorance is, therefore, power.

The most sensible people to be met with in society are men of business and of the world, who argue from what they see and know, instead of spinning cobweb distinctions of what things ought to be.

You shall yourself be judge. Reason, with most people, means their own opinion.

People are not soured by misfortune, but by the reception they meet with in it.