The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit.

Nor do they trust their tongue alone, but speak a language of their own; can read a nod, a shrug, a look, far better than a printed book; convey a libel in a frown, and wink a reputation down.

I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.

A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle.

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.

Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired

Arbitrary power is the natural object of temptation to a prince, as wine and women to a young fellow, or a bribe to a judge, or avarice to old age.