We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak.

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

A man who knows the world will not only make the most of everything he does know, but of many things he does not know, and will gain more credit by his adroit mode of hiding his ignorance than the pedant by his awkward attempt to exhibit his erudition.

Metaphysicians have been learning their lessons for the last four thousand years, and it is high time that they should now begin to teach us something. Can any of the tribe inform us why all the operations of the mind are carried on with undiminished strength and activity in dreams, except the judgment, which alone is suspended and dormant?

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

Persecuting bigots may be compared to those burning lenses which Lenhenboeck and others composed from ice; by their chilling apathy they freeze the suppliant; by their fiery zeal they burn the sufferer.

The rich are more envied by those who have a little, than by those who have nothing.