The French revolution was a .eune invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty; but it had neither lever cogs, nor adjusting powers, and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors, and set itself on fire.

If sensuality be our only happiness we ought to envy the brutes, for instinct is a surer, shorter, safer guide to such happiness than reason.

When all run by common consent into vice, none appear to do so.

Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.

No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.