That incessant envy wherewith the common rate of mankind pursues all superior natures to their own.

Lord, Madame, I have fed like a farmer; I shall grow as fat as a porpoise.

When any one person or body of men seize into their hands the power in the last resort, there is properly no longer a government, but what Aristotle and his followers call the abuse and corruption of one.

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

'T is an old maxim in the schools, That flattery 's the food of fools; Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit.

I forget whether advice be among the lost things which Ariosto says are to be found in the moon: that and time ought to have been there.

There seems to be no part of knowledge in fewer hands than that of discerning when to have done.