*In all cases of slander currency, whenever the forger of the lie is not to be found, the injured parties should have a right to come on any of the endorsers. Sheridan.

*Those men who carry about and who listen to accusations should all be hanged, if so it could be at my decision–the carriers by their tongues, the listeners by their ears. Plautus.

*The surest method against scandal is to live it down by perseverance in well-doing, and by prayer to God that He would cure the distempered mind of those who traduce and injure us. Boerhaave.

*Believe nothing against another, but on good authority; nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to conceal it. William Penn.

*Slanderers are at all events economical for they make a little scandal go a great way, and rarely open their mouths except at the expense of other people. Chatfield.

*What indulgence does the world extend to those evil-speakers who, under the mask of friendship, stab indiscriminately with the keen, though rusty blade of slander! Mme. Roland.

*Life would be a perpetual flea-hunt if a man were obliged to run down all the innuendoes, inveracities, insinuations and suspicions which are uttered against him. Beecher.

*If Parliament were to consider the sporting with reputation of as much importance as sporting on manors, and pass an act for the preservation of fame as well as game, there are many who would thank them for the bill. Sheridan.

*There is evil enough in man, God knows; but it is not the mission of every young man and woman to detail and report it all. Keep the atmosphere as pure as possible, and fragrant with gentleness and charity. John Hall.

*Close thine ear against him that shall open his mouth secretly against another. If thou receivest not his words, they fly back and wound the reporter. If thou dost receive them, they fly forward and wound the receiver. Lavater.

*When a mean wretch cannot vie with another in virtue, out of his wickedness he begins to slander. The abject envious wretch will slander the virtuous man when absent, but when brought face to face his loquacious tongue becomes dumb. Saadi.

*Slander’s mark was ever yet the fair;/The ornament of beauty is suspect,/A crow that flies in heaven’s sweetest air,/So thou be good, slander doth but approve/Thy worth the greater. Shakespeare.

*How infrequently is the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or a shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped with the imputation of proceeding from bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper! Sterne.

*To be continually subject to the breath of slander will tarnish the purest virtue, as a constant exposure to the atmosphere will obscure the brightness of the finest gold; but in either case the real value of both continues the same, although the currency may be somewhat impeded. Colton.

*There is one sweet lenitive at least for evils, which nature holds out; so I took it kindly at her hands, and fell asleep. Sterne.

*Balm that tames all anguish, saint that evil thoughts and aims takest away, and into souls dost creep, like to a breeze from heaven. Wordsworth.

*In a sound sleep the soul goes home to recruit her strength, which could not else endure the wear and tear of life. Rahel.

*The long sleep of death closes our scars, and the short sleep of life our wounds. Sleep is the half of time which heals us. Richter.

*Sleep, that knits up the raveled sleave of care, the death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, chief nourisher in life’s feast. Shakespeare.

*It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed, and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs have just been tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labor of the day is gone. A gentle failure of the perceptions creeps over you; the spirit of consciousness disengages itself once more, and with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of a sleeping child, the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye–it is closed–the mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds. Leigh Hunt.

*Many are idly busy. Domitian was busy, but then it was catching flies. Jeremy Taylor.

*A sluggish, dawdling, and dilatory man may have spasms of activity, but he never acts continuously and consecutively with energetic quickness. George S. Hillard.

*Excess is not the only thing which breaks men in their health, and in the comfortable enjoyment of themselves; but many are brought into a very ill and languishing habit of body by mere sloth; and sloth is in itself both a great sin, and the cause of many more. South.

*A tender smile, our sorrow’s only balm. Young.

*Smiles are the language of love. J.C. and A.W. Hare.

*Softness of smile indicates softness of character. Lavater.

*Is it not a thing divine to have a smile which, none know how, has the power to lighten the weight of that enormous chain which all the living in common drag behind them? Victor Hugo.

*A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself. Landor.

*It is a proof of boorishness to confer a favor with a bad grace; it is the act of giving that is hard and painful. How little does a smile cost! Bruyere.

*Smiles are much more becoming than frowns. This seems a natural encouragement to good-humor; as much as to say, if people have a mind to be handsome, they must not be peevish and untoward. Jeremy Collier.

*(Snow:) How beautiful it was, falling so silently, all day long, all night long, on the mountains, on the meadows, on the roofs of the living, on the graves of the dead. Longfellow.

*We are more sociable, and get on better with people by the heart than the intellect. Bruyere.

*Society is no comfort to one not sociable. Shakespeare.

*People are to be taken in very small doses. Emerson.

*Cursed be the social lies that warp us from the living truth! Tennyson.

*I never mingled with men, but I came home less of a man than I went out. Tauler.

*Men would not live long in society if they were not the dupes of each other. Rochefoucauld.

*The world either breaks or hardens the heart. Chamfort.

*The virtue most in request in society is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. Emerson.

*Society develops wit, but it is contemplation alone that forms genius. Mme. de Stael.

*Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is wholesome for its character. Lowell.

*The upper current of society presents no certain criterion by which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows. Macaulay.

*Society does not exist for itself, but for the individual; and man goes into it, not to lose, but to find himself. Phillips Brooks.

*Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. Aristotle.

*Society will pardon much to genius and special gifts, but, being in its nature conventional, it loves what is conventional, or what belongs to coming together. Emerson.

*Society is a strong solution of books. It draws the virtue out of what is best worth reading, as hot water draws the strength of tea-leaves. O.W. Holmes.

*Society is the offspring of leisure; and to acquire this forms the only rational motive for accumulating wealth, notwithstanding the cant that prevails on the subject of labor. Tuckerman.

*It is the fine souls who serve us, and not what is called fine society. Fine society is only a self-protection against the vulgarities of the street and the tavern. Emerson.

*God having designed man for a sociable creature, furnished him with language, which was to be the great instrument and cementer of society. Locke. (Watch our language!)

*Society itself, which should create/Kindness, destroys what little we had got:/To feel for none is the true social art/Of the world’s stoics–men without a heart. Byron.

*An amusing lecture is as useful for the health as the exercise of the body. Kant.

*Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. Emerson.

*Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home. Countess of Blessington.

*The nearer we approach to the grand luminary the court, the more frigidity and apathy shall we experience. Colton.

*Society is, indeed, a contract…It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art, a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead and those who are to be born. Burke.