I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.

How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.

If time, like money, could be laid by while one was not using it, there might be some excuse for the idleness of half of the world, but yet not a full one. For even this would be such an economy as the living on a principal sum, without making it purchase interest.

Any one may do a casual act of good-nature; but a continuation of them shows it a part of the temperament.

Keyholes are the occasions of more sin and wickedness, than all other holes in this world put together.

[I have] been in love with one princess or another almost all my life, and I hope I shall go on so, till I die, being firmly persuaded, that if ever I do a mean action, it must be in some interval betwixt one passion and another.

I am persuaded that every time a man smiles - but much more so when he laughs - it adds something to this fragment of life.