Henry Home, Lord Kames

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

The difficulty is not so great to die for a friend as to find a friend worth dying for.

Seldom do we talk of ourselves with success. If I condemn myself, more is believed than is expressed; if I praise myself, much less.

Death, whether it regards ourselves or others, appears less terrible in war than at home. The cries of women and children, friends in anguish, a dark room, dim tapers, priests and physicians, are what affect us the most on the death-bed. …

Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.

Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.

If you should escape the censure of others, hope not to escape your own.

Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes.

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands. Passion swells by gratification; and the impossibility of satisfying every one of his demands will oblige you to stop short at last, after he has become a little …

Many shining actions owe their success to chance though the general or statesman runs away with the applause.

Benevolence is allied to few vices; selfishness to fewer virtues.

An agreeable figure and winning manner, which inspire affection without love, are always new. Beauty loses its relish, the graces never; after the longest acquaintance, they are no less agreeable than at first.

Beauty is a dangerous property, tending to corrupt the mind of the wife, though it soon loses its influence over the husband. A figure agreeable and engaging, which inspires affection, without the ebriety of love, is a much safer choice.

Parsimony is enough to make the master of the golden mines as poor as he that has nothing; for a man may be brought to a morsel of bread by parsimony as well as profusion.

A man does but faintly relish that felicity which costs him nothing; happy they whom pain leads to pleasure.

We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.

A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body, without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.