I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

There is no society or conversation to be kept up in the world without good-nature, or something which must bear its appearance and supply its place. For this reason mankind have been forced to invent a kind of artificial humanity, which is what we express by the word Good-Breeding.

True benevolence or compassion, extends itself through the whole of existence and sympathizes with the distress of every creature capable of sensation.

Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion--a form of knowledge without the power of it.

The utmost extent of man's knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

When a man becomes familiar with his goddess, she quickly sinks into a woman.

I have somewhere met with the epitaph on a charitable man which has pleased me very much. I cannot recollect the words, but here is the sense of it: 'What I spent I lost; what I possessed is left to others; what I gave away remains with me.'