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Jealousy seldom punishes with the severity it suffers.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
The vanity of being asked advice often makes us confirm the opinion of those that consult us.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Your worst and most dangerous enemy is the person that injures you under the pretensions of friendship.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
We often appear unconscious of our faults, merely from frequency of viewing them.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Concerning character, we sometimes judge of the whole by its parts.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
A man's enemies are those he should endeavor first to make his friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
The beginning of wisdom is the knowledge of folly.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Though fools can censure others, they cannot live free of reproach themselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
There is one way for a fool to appear wise, that is, to be silent.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Some people are so much afraid of being deceived, that they never venture to trust; like misers, their avarice destroys their gain.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Ignorance is better than knowledge misapplied.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is better to be idle than employed in ill.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Do not imagine that the good you intend will balance the evil you perform.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
In estimating the adversities of life, we would seldom have much reason to complain of the evils we suffer, did we understand the dangers we daily escape.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Most men experience greater pleasure in correcting the faults of others, than they share grief at the detection of equal defects in themselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Our faults are not without vanity, any more than our virtues.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Were there no fools, there would be no flatterers.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
The reasy why we so often judge correctly concerning the faults of others, is because we are always in search of them.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Our passions may be compared to certain slaves--the more severity we show them, the better they obey us.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Virtue has a secret dignity, even with those that ridicule it.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
A sure way to hear of your faults is to boast of your virtues.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
There are two things which a man should scrupulously avoid: giving advice that he would not follow, and asking advice when he is determined to pursue his own opinion.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Whatever dissolves friendship should, at least, be equal in importance to that which formed it.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
All that weak people learn from disappointment, is less confidence in future enterprise.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
All men are more wicked in thought than action.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Few men are wicked from contempt of virtue; but many from love of vice.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
The reason we have few friends in adversity, is, because we have no true ones in prosperity.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Anyone may have friends in prosperity, but to have them in adversity, is an object of superior management.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Hypocrisy is the outward acknowledgment of inward shame.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Men sometimes reproach themselves with fancied faults, that they may be thought less guilty of real ones.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
There is a medium in opinions, as well as in pleasures--error usually lies in extremes.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
There are two indiscretions that generally distinguish fools: a readiness to report whatever they hear, and a practice of communicating with secrecy what is commonly understood.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Some men are tempted to violate secrecy from the uneasiness secrecy gives them, and others, merely to impress you with the extent of their confidence.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is always imprudent to force opinions upon others; if they do not question the arguments they will the authority, and having ventured to examine the one, will feel less delicacy in rejecting the other.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Most men will go farther to give advice than to follow their own opinion.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
We would seldom be deceived by flattery, did our own conceit not promote the delusion.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Flattery succeeds best on minds previously occupied by conceit.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Our happiness, like our fortune, is often seriously injured by injudicious economy.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
In love, we are best pleased when we please others.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Idleness prepares us for mischief.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
In giving advice, aptitude is often less to be considered, than seasonableness.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Few people love with the violence they hate.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
As evacuation eases the body, so occasional ejectment of passion seems to appease the agonies of the soul, and dispose to tranquility the agitations of the heart.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
A great cause of evil in the world is that men seldom think themselves criminal if they offer the same injustice to others that has been successfully practiced on themselves.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
The mind of man is a scene of perpetual instability and commotion, ruffled by every breeze of passion and agitated by every impulse of hope; it floats with giddy security on the ebullitions of fancy, and sinks with precipitation in the cavities of despair; it pursues with avidity the emotions of sense, and listens with rapture to the murmurs of restraint; it hears with pious reverence the counsels of reason, and follows with lucid submission the dictates of pleasure: always fickle and undetermined, it looks for quiet, sometimes in remonstrance, sometimes in acquiescence; it often mixes with confusion, that it may establish peace, and often regulates quietude by turbulent uproar.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
With the ambitious, the failure of one expedient is the suggestion of another; but with the irresolute, defeat usually occasions abandonment of purpose.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Laws, however divine in origin and institution, would be found of little coercion among men, were the administration of them not committed to mortals.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
Many virtues are but disguised vices.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
He that searches for praise will often find contempt.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
We rate ability in men by what they finish, not by what they attempt.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
A suspicious person is the rival of him that deceives, both seem to practice a knowledge of cunning device, and equable sense of disengenuous merit.
NORMAN MACDONALD, Maxims and Moral Reflections
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