There are three great events in our lives: birth, life and death. Of birth we have no conscience; with death, we suffer; and, concerning life, we forget to live it.

One should never risk a joke, even of the mildest and most unexceptional charters, except among people of culture and wit.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

Cunning is none of the best nor worst qualities; it floats between virtue and vice; there is scarce any exigence where it may not, and perhaps ought not to be supplied by prudence.

Too great carelessness, equally with excess in dress, multiplies the wrinkles of old age, and makes its decay still more conspicuous.

He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.