Unsuccessful emulation is too apt to sink into envy, which of all sins has not even the excuse to offer of temporary gratification.
Men at a distance, who have admired our systems of government unfounded in nature, are apt to accuse the rulers, and say that taxes have been assessed too high and collected too rigidly.
When the habitually even-tempered suddenly fly into a passion, that explosion is apt to be more impressive than the outburst of the most violent amongst us.
Fame is a skittish jade, more fickle even than Fortune, and apt to shy, and bolt, and plunge away on very trifling causes.
To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift. Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.
Prejudice is a house-plant which is very apt to wilt if you take it out-of-doors among folks.
The world is terribly apt to take people at their own valuation.
Such sins, even if they do not kill all grace in us, do harm, nevertheless; and though they are only venial in themselves, they make us apt, ready, and inclined to lose grace and to fall into mortal sin.
If you can make the reader laugh he is apt to get careless and go on reading.
We do not get ice-cream every where, and so, when we do, we are apt to dissipate to excess.
Malice is of the boomerang character, and is apt to turn upon the projector.
A witty illustration or an apt story will accomplish more than columns of argument.
Too many people are apt to redeem their profits too quickly. In a huge bull market they wind up with piddling profits, only to watch their former holdings soar. That usually prompts them into making mistakes later when, believing that the market owes them some money, they buy at the wrong time at much higher levels.
I want people to believe me when I play a part and they are less apt to if they know a lot about me and have associations about me.
Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who posses it; and this I know, my lords: that where law ends, tyranny begins.
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
I know too well that these arguments from probabilities are imposters, and unless great caution is observed in the use of them, they are apt to be deceptive.
A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.
We are apt to mistake our vocation by looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and by stepping over the ordinary ones that lie directly in the road before us.
Vain man is apt to think we were merely intended for the world's propagation and to keep its human inhabitants sweet and clean; but, by their leaves, had we the same literature he would find our brains as fruitful as our bodies.