I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.

There is so much trouble in coming into the world, and so much more, as well as meanness, in going out of it, that it is hardly worth while to be here at all.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.

I have observed that in comedies the best actor plays the droll, while some scrub rogue is made the fine gentleman or hero. Thus it is in the farce of life. Wise men spend their time in mirth; it is only fools who are serious.

I think it indisputable that the distance between the intellectual faculties of different men is greater than that between the same faculties in some men and some other animals.

Indifference must be a crime in us, to be ranked but one degree below treachery; for deserting the commonwealth is next to betraying it.

God himself, with reverence be it spoken, is not an absolute but a limited monarch, limited by the rule which infinite wisdom prescribes to infinite power.