J.W. Lord Quotes

The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.

A gentleman is often seen, but very seldom heard to laugh.

Two people cannot be alone together for upwards of half an hour without one emerging as the superior.

Study the heart and the mind of man, and begin with your own. Meditation and reflection must lay the foundation of that knowledge, but experience and practice must, and alone can, complete it.

It must be owned, that the Graces do not seem to be natives of Great Britain; and I doubt, the best of us here have more of rough than polished diamond.

Those whom you can make like themselves better will, I promise you, like you very well.

Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.

I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.

When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.

Montesquieu well knew, and justly admired, the happy constitution of this country [Great Britain], where fixed and known laws equally restrain monarchy from tyranny and liberty from licentiousness.

Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.

Do as you would be done by, is the surest method of pleasing.

Many new years you may see, but happy ones you cannot see without deserving them. These virtue, honor, and knowledge alone can merit, alone can produce.

There never were, since the creation of the world, two cases exactly parallel.

An ignorant man is insignificant and contemptible; nobody cares for his company, and he can just be said to live, and that is all.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.

I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.

The heart has such an influence over the understanding, that it is worth while to engage it in our interest.

Unlike my subject will I frame my song, It shall be witty and it shan't be long.

Honest error is to be pitied not ridiculed.

True politeness is perfect ease and freedom. It simply consists in treating others just as you love to be treated yourself.

Indifference is commonly the mother of discretion.

Dispatch is the soul of business, and nothing contributes more to dispatch than method.

In friendship, as well as in love, the mind is often the dupe of the heart.

To write anything tolerable, the mind must be in a natural, proper disposition; provocatives, in that case, as well as in another,will only produce miserable, abortive performances.

Our conjectures pass upon us for truths; we will know what we do not know, and often, what we cannot know: so mortifying to our pride is the base suspicion of ignorance.

It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

I would have all intoleration intolerated in its turn.

Merit and knowledge will not gain hearts, though they will secure them when gained.

Nothing is more dissimilar than natural and acquired politeness. The first consists in a willing abnegation of self; the second in a compelled recollection of others.

Ugliness is a letter of credit for some special purposes.

There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.

There is hardly any place or any company where you may not gain knowledge, if you please; almost everybody knows some one thing, and is glad to talk about that one thing.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

Every man is to be had one way or another and every woman almost anyway.

People hate who makes you feel one's inferiority.

Dispatch is the soul of business.

Real friendship is a slow grower.

Deserve a great deal, and you shall have a great deal; deserve little, and you shall have but a little; and be good for nothing atall, and I assure you, you shall have nothing at all.

Human nature is the same everywhere; the modes only are different.

Should you be unfortunate enough to have vices, you may, to a certain degree, even dignify them by a strict observance of decorum;at least they will lose something of their natural turpitude.

The most familiar and intimate habitudes, connections, friendships, require a degree of good-breeding both to preserve and cement them.

Everything is worth seeing once, and the more one sees the less one either wonders or admires.

A vulgar man is captious and jealous; eager and impetuous about trifles. He suspects himself to be slighted, and thinks everything that is said meant at him.

All I can say, in answer to this kind queries [of friends] is that I have not the distemper called the Plague; but that I have allthe plagues of old age, and of a shattered carcase.

The permanency of most friendships depends upon the continuity of good fortune.

Business by no means forbids pleasures; on the contrary, they reciprocally season each other; and I will venture to affirm, that no man enjoys either in perfection that does not join both.