Is there anything more tedious than the often repeated tales of the old and forgetful?

We know the effects of many things, but the cause of few; experience, therefore, is a surer guide than imagination, and inquiry than conjecture.

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.

The excess of our youth are checks written against our age and they are payable with interest thirty years later.

It is not so difficult a task as to plant new truths, as to root out old errors

When you have nothing to say, say nothing; a weak defense strengthens your opponent, and silence is less injurious than a bad reply.

No man can promise himself even fifty years of life, but any man may, if he please, live in the proportion of fifty years in forty-let him rise early, that he may have the day before him, and let him make the most of the day, by determining to expend it on two sorts of acquaintance only-those by whom something may be got, and those from whom something maybe learned.