God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinctions.

Simplicity of manner is the last attainment. Men are very long afraid of being natural, from the dread of being taken for ordinary.

Derision is never so agonizing as when it pounces on the wanderings of misguided sensibility.

Nothing is so firmly than that which is least known.

Damn the Solar System. Bad light; planets too distant; pestered with comets; feeble contrivance; could make a better myself.

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act.

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.