JOHANN GEORG ZIMMERMANN

Comedians are not usually actors, but imitations of actors.

A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.

Many good qualities are not sufficient to balance a single want - the want of money.

Many have been ruined by their fortunes, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great.

Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations, the corroding dew that destroys the choice blossom. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed.

Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.

When we meet with better fare than was expected, the disappointment is overlooked even by the unscrupulous. When we meet with worse than was expected, philosophers alone know how to make it better.

The ill usage of every minute is a new record against us in heaven.

Novels do not force their fair readers to sin, they only instruct them how to sin; the consequences of which are fully detailed, and not in a way calculated to seduce any but weak but weak minds; few of their heroines are happily disposed of.

Idlers cannot even find time to be idle, or the industrious to be at leisure. We must always be doing or suffering

Thought and action are the redeeming features of our lives.

In fame's temple there is always a niche to be found for rich dunces, importunate scoundrels, or successful butchers of the human race.

Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.

There are few mortals so insensible that their affections cannot he gained by mildness, their confidence by sincerity, their hatred by scorn or neglect

Troops of furies march in the drunkard's triumph.

Wit, to be well defined, must be defined by wit itself; then it will be worth listening to.

It would be a considerable consolation to the poor and discontented could they but see the means whereby the wealth they covet has been acquired, or the misery that it entails.

That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy.

Nobility should be elective, not hereditary.

The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

Though fancy may be the patient's complaint, necessity is often the doctor's.

The sluggard is a living insensible.

Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.

Many species of wit are quite mechanical; these are the favorites of witlings, whose fame in words scarce outlives the remembrance of their funeral ceremonies.

Fools with bookish knowledge art children with edged weapons; they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.