Aphorisms from Austin O’Malley’s Keystones of Thought, 1914:

• Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
• Education is only a ladder to gather fruit from the tree of knowledge, not the fruit itself.
• Humility is the sister of humor.
• Think what you have to say, and then don’t say it.
• Men that believe only what they understand can write their creed on a postage-stamp.
• A fallen lighthouse is more dangerous than a reef.
• The best blood will at some time get into a fool or a mosquito.
• Comedy smiles from a neutral intellect; humor laughs from a favoring intellect.
• An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.
• The picturesque is the romantic seen.
• The worst miser is the learned man that will not write.
• To laugh at yourself is real life, never acting.
• Put your purse in your head and you will not be robbed.
• A critic at best is only a football coach.
• A gentleman seldom meets rude persons.
• It is yesterday that makes to-morrow so sad.

“A little learning striving to explain a great subject is like an attempt to light up a cathedral with a single taper, which does no more than to show for an instant one foolish face.”

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” — Seneca, Letters From a Stoic

Aphorisms of German physicist Georg Lichtenberg (1742-1799):

• “Passionate ambition and suspicion I have invariably found to go together.”
• “It is in most cases more difficult to make intelligent people believe that you are what you are not, than really to become what you would appear to be.”
• “True, unaffected distrust of human power in general is the surest sign of mental ability.”
• “I am convinced that we not only love ourselves in others, but hate ourselves in others too.”
• “Where moderation is a fault indifference is a crime.”
• “I suppose there never was a man of any great mark who was not slandered; or hardly any blackguard who never directed a slander against some man of merit.”
• “Mankind loves company, even if it is no more than that of a burning candle.”
• “It is a fact that there are numbers of people who read merely that they need not think.”
• “With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.”
• “What is very rare seldom remains long unexplained. What is inexplicable is usually no longer rare, and has perhaps never been so.”
• “The commonest opinions and the things that everybody takes for granted often the most deserve examination.”
• “That in advancing years we should grow incapable of learning has some connection with age’s intolerance of being ordered about, and a very close connection, too.”
• “I have looked through the list of illnesses, and did not find cares or sad thoughts mentioned among them. That is a mistake, surely.”
• “Saints in stone have done more in the world than living ones.”

“Has anyone, I wonder, ever dreamt of odours, without an external cause to give rise to the impression? — dreamt, for instance, of the smell of roses, when there was no rose or rosewater in the vicinity. With music this is certainly the case, and with light too; but feelings of pain in a dream usually have some external cause. As regards odours I am uncertain.”

“It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.” — Diderot

“The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.” — George Bernard Shaw

Aphorisms from Norman Macdonald’s Maxims and Moral Reflections, 1827:

• By speaking contemptibly of our enemies, we disgrace our own hostility.
• We would be successful in most enterprises of life, were we to take that advice to ourselves which we give to others in similar circumstances.
• Severity of punishment deters minor crimes, but renders greater ones more certain and determined.
• Pride, like love, is sure to discover itself; because it can only derive value from the success with which it affects others.
• Were there no fools there would be no flatterers.
• The less we know of ourselves, the worse qualified we are to judge correctly of others.
• No end can be honorable that is dishonorably obtained.
• The better a man is known to himself, the more easily he is understood by others.
• There are two sorts of people that are never contented: they that do not know what they desire, and they that attempt impossibilities.
• The failure of many designs is owing to a confidence of success.
• A sure way, sometimes, to expose our virtue, is to endeavor to conceal it.
• A man is more deserving of success, that claims not adulation as his first conquest.
• We advise others better than ourselves.
• Most men have two principles, one practical, another professional.
• In cunning, our pride oftener dreads disappointment than our interest.

“Most men know how to take offence; but few know how to forgive — pride is always impatient; magnanimity, tolerant and pacific.”

“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

“We have got to learn to think scientifically, not only about inanimate things, but about ourselves and one another. It is possible to do this.” — J.B.S. Haldane

“Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.” — Marcus Aurelius