He was so generally civil, that nobody thanked him for it.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion.

You can never be wise unless you love reading.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.

A man would rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be known.

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show.

My nights are flatulent and unquiet.

Oratory is the power of beating down your adversary's arguments and putting better in their place.

Those authors who would find many readers, must endeavour to please while they instruct.

Our minds, like our bodies, are in continual flux; something is hourly lost, and something acquired.... Do not suffer life to stagnate; it will grow muddy for want of motion: commit yourself again to the current of the world.

No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.

Ladies, stock and tend your hive,
Trifle not at thirty-five;
For, howe'er we boast and strive,
Life declines from thirty-five;
He that ever hopes to thrive
Must begin by thirty-five.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid.

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.