Nobody ought to be too old to improve: I should be sorry if I was; and I flatter myself I have already improved considerably by my travels. First, I can swallow gruel soup, egg soup, and all manner of soups, without making faces much. Secondly, I can pretty well live without tea.

it is, in truth, the most absurd of all suppositions, that a human being can be educated, or even nourished and brought up, without imbibing numberless prejudices from every thing which passes around him.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

So fades a summer cloud away; So sinks the gale when storms are o'er; So gently shuts the eye of day; So dies a wave along the shore.

Society than solitude is worse, And man to man is still the greatest curse.

You speak of beginning the education of your son. The moment he was able to form an idea his education was already begun. . . .

The dead of midnight is the noon of thought.