Frances Osborne Quotes

A few books, well studied, and thoroughly digested, nourish the understanding more than hundreds but gargled in the mouth, as ordinary students use.

He that seeks perfection upon earth leaves nothing new for the saints to find in heaven; for whilst men teach, there will be mistakes in divinity, and as long as no other govern, errors in the State.

What you leave at your death, let it be without controversy, else the lawyers will be your heirs.

It is an aphorism in physic, that unwholesome airs, because perpetually sucked into the lungs, do distemper health more than coarser diet used but at set times. The like may be said of society, which, if good, is a better refiner of the spirits than ordinary books.

Such as are betrayed by their easy nature to be ordinary security for their friends leave so little to themselves, as their liberty remains ever after arbitrary at the will of others; experience having recorded many, whom their fathers had left elbowroom enough, that by suretyship have expired in a dungeon.

When you speak to any, especially of quality, look them full in the face; other gestures betraying want of breeding, confidence, or honesty; dejected eyes confessing, to most judgments, guilt or folly.

Leave your bed upon the first desertion of sleep; it being ill for the eye's to read lying, and worse for the mind to be idle; since the head during that laziness is commonly a cage for unclean thoughts.

They, and they only, advantage themselves by travel, who, well fraught with the experience of what their own country affords, carry ever with them large and thriving talents.

Covetousness, like a candle ill made, smothers the splendor of a happy fortune in its own grease.

The way to elegancy of style is to employ your pen upon every errand; and the more trivial and dry it is, the more brains must be allowed for sauce.

The ordinary saying is, Count money after your father; so the same prudence adviseth to measure the ends of all counsels, though uttered by never so intimate a friend.

Let not the titles of consanguinity betray you into a prejudicial trust; no blood being apter to raise a fever, or cause a consumption sooner in your poor estate, than that which is nearest your own.

I bear to the wisdom of Sir Philip Sidney, who said that next to hunting he liked hawking worst. However, though he may have fallen into as hyperbolical an extreme, yet who can put too great a scorn upon their folly, that, to bring home a rascal deer, or a few rotten conies, submit their lives to the will or passion of such as may take them under a penalty no less slight than there is discretion shown in exposing them.