I have often reflected within myself on this unaccountable humor in womankind of being smitten with everything that is showy and superficial, and on the numberless evils that befall the sex from this light fantastical disposition.

Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind

The moderns cannot reach their beauties, but can avoid their imperfections.

In private conversation between intimate friends, the wisest men very often talk like the weakest : for indeed the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

We are growing serious, and, let me tell you, that's the very next step to being dull.

Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?