If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last.

It is in disputes as in armies, where the weaker side sets up false lights, and makes a great noise, to make the enemy believe them more numerous and strong than they really are.

Very few men, properly speaking, live at present, but are providing to live another time.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

There are but three ways for a man to revenge himself of the censure of the world,--to despise it, to return the like, or to endeavor to live so as to avoid it; the first of these is usually pretended, the last is almost impossible, the universal practice is for the second.

No man will take counsel, but every man will take money. Therefore, money is better than counsel.

It is the first rule in oratory that a man must appear such as he would persuade others to be: and that can be accomplished only by the force of his life.