The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

In the loss of an object we do not proportion our grief to the real value it bears, but to the value our fancies set upon it.

A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.