James Wood, comp. Dictionary of Quotations. 1899.
Steele
Ceremony is the invention of wise men to keep fools at a distance.
Fire and sword are but slow engines of destruction in comparison with the tongue of the babbler.
He that wants good sense is unhappy in having learning, for he has thereby only more ways of exposing himself; and he that has sense knows that learning is not knowledge, but rather the art of using it.
I cannot think of any character below the flatterer, except he that envies him.
I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding, and yet there is no one vice more common.
I look upon an able statesman out of business like a huge whale, that will endeavour to overturn the ship unless he has an empty cask to play with.
It is a great ease to have one in our own shape a species below us, and who, without being enlisted in our service, is by nature of our retinue.
Man thinks he has an estate of reputation, and is glad to see one that will bring any of it home to him; it is no matter how dirty a bag it is conveyed to him in, or by how clownish a messenger, so the money is good.
Men of courage, men of sense, and men of letters are frequent; but a true gentleman is what one seldom sees.
Men spend their lives in the service of their passions instead of employing their passions in the service of their lives.
Nothing can atone for the want of modesty, without which beauty is ungraceful and wit detestable.
Of all evils in story-telling, the humour of telling tales one after another in great numbers is the least supportable.
Praise from an enemy is the most pleasing of all commendations.
Simplicity is, of all things, the hardest to be copied.
The coxcomb is a fool of parts, a flatterer a knave of parts.
The fool is in himself the object of pity till he is flattered.
The Latin word for a flatterer (assentator) implies no more than a person that barely consents; and indeed such a one, if a man were able to purchase or maintain him, cannot be bought too dear.
The reason that there is such a general outcry against flatterers is, that there are so very few good ones.
There is something so moving in the very image of weeping beauty.
They who resign life rather than part with liberty do only a prudent action; out those who lay it down for friends and country do a heroic one.
Very great benefactors to the rich, or those whom they call people at their ease, are your persons of no consequence.
What we want to be pleased with flattery, is to believe that the man is sincere who gives it us.