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

For, if we take an examination of what is generally understood by happiness, as it has respect either to the understanding or the senses, we shall find all its properties and adjuncts will herd under this short definition: that it is a perpetual possession of being well deceived.

Two women seldom grow intimate but at the expense of a third person.

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

And surely one of the best rules in conversation is, never to say a thing which any of the company can reasonably wish had been left unsaid.

The sciences are found, like Hercules's oxen, by tracing them backward; and old sciences are unravelled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting.