Great Throughts Treasury

"My dear friend, clear your mind of can't."

"Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little."

"Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries, but custom gives the name poverty to the want of superfluities."

"Nature never gives everything at once."

"Nay, Madam, when you are declaiming, declaim; and when you are calculating, calculate."

"Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections."

"Never speak of a man in his own presence. It is always indelicate, and may be offensive."

"No degree of knowledge attainable by man is able to set him above the want of hourly assistance."

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

"No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it."

"No man can justly aspire to honour, but at the hazard of disgrace."

"No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius."

"No man hates him at whom he can laugh."

"No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring."

"No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures."

"No man is by nature the property of another."

"No man is defeated without some resentment, which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong."

"No man was ever great by imitation."

"No man likes to live under the eye of perpetual disapprobation."

"No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company."

"No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity."

"No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability."

"No man’s conscience can tell him the rights of another man; they; must be known by rational investigation or historical inquiry."

"No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right."

"No member of a society has a right to teach any doctrine contrary to what society holds to be true."

"No mind is much employed upon the present: Recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments."

"No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves."

"No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority."

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."

"No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction. A man is pleased that his wife is dressed as well as other people, and the wife is pleased that she is so dressed."

"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him."

"None are happy but by the anticipation of change. The change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again."

"None but a fool worries about things he cannot influence."

"Nothing at all will be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome."

"Nothing can be truly great which is not right."

"Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it."

"Nothing is ended with honour which does not conclude better than it began."

"Nothing is little to him that feels it with great sensibility."

"Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory; as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others those attempts which he neglects himself."

"Nothing has tended more to retard the advancement of science than the disposition in vulgar minds to vilify what they cannot comprehend."

"O, how vain and vile a passion is this fear! What base, uncomely things it makes men do."

"Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment."

"Novelty is indeed necessary to preserve eagerness and alacrity; but art and nature have sores inexhaustible by human intellects; and every moment produces something new to him who has quickened his faculties by diligent observation."

"Objects imperfectly discerned take forms from the hope or fear of the beholder."

"Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people."

"Occupation alone is happiness."

"Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate is that of party-spirit; of men, who, being numbered, they know not why, in any party, resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favor those whom they profess to follow."

"Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart."

"Of all the enemies of idleness, want is the most formidable. Want always struggles against idleness; but want herself is often overcome, and every hour shows some who had rather live in ease than in plenty."

"Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable."