The axe of intemperance has lopped off his green boughs and left him a withered trunk.

There is no talent so useful toward rising in the world, or which puts men more out of the reach of fortune, than that quality generally possessed by the dullest sort of men, and in common speech called discretion; a species of lower prudence, by the assistance of which, people of the meanest intellectuals, without any other qualification, pass through the world in great tranquillity, and with universal good treatment, neither giving nor taking offence.

A pleasant companion is as good as a coach.

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

He had been eight years upon a project for extracting sunbeams out of cucumbers, which were to be put into vials hermetically sealed, and let out to warm the air in raw, inclement summers.

If you were not reasoned into your beliefs, you cannot be reasoned out of them.

By candle-light nobody would have taken you for above five-and-twenty.