There is nothing so awkward as courting a woman whilst she is making sausages.

Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! - long - long since had ye numbered out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights; and have taken a few turns on it, come back strengthened and refreshed.

We are born to trouble; and we may depend upon it, whilst we live in this world, we shall have it, though with intermissions.

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Conversation is a traffick; and if you enter into it, without some stock of knowledge, to ballance the account perpetually betwixtyou,--the trade drops at once: and this is the reasonwhy travellers have so little [good] conversation with natives,--owing to their [the natives'] suspicionthat there is nothing to be extracted from the conversationworth the trouble of their bad language.

I am persuaded ... that both man and woman bear pain or sorrow, (and, for aught I know, pleasure too) best in a horizontal position.

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