What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

Nowadays beautiful women are counted among the talents of their husbands.

Never undertake anything for which you wouldn't have the courage to ask the blessings of heaven.

I ceased in the year 1764 to believe that one can convince one’s opponents with arguments printed in books. It is not to do that, therefore, that I have taken up my pen, but merely so as to annoy them, and to bestow strength and courage on those on our own side, and to make it known to the others that they have not convinced us.

The celebrated painter Gainsborough got as much pleasure from seeing violins as from hearing them.

The wisdom of providence is as much revealed in the rarity of genius, as in the circumstance that not everyone is deaf or blind.