Pleasure is the business of the young, business the pleasure of the old.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

No fruit has a more precise marked period of maturity, than love; if neglected to be gathered at that time, it will certainly fall to the ground and die away.

Have you never seen a strange unconnected deformed representation of a figure, which seen in another point of view, became proportioned and agreeable? It is the picture of man.

There is scarce any passion so heartily decried by moralists and satirists, as AMBITION; and yet, methinks, ambition is not a vice but in a vicious mind: in a virtuous mind it is a virtue, and will be found to take its color from the character in which it is mixed. Ambition is a desire of superiority; and a man may become superior, either by making others less or himself greater.

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?