Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.

I take a simple view of life. It is keep your eyes open and get on with it.

[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.

Every obstruction of the course of justice,--is a door opened to betray society, and bereave us of those blessings which it has inview.... It is a strange way of doing honour to God, to screen actions which are a disgrace to humanity.

Go, poor devil, get thee gone! Why should I hurt thee? This world surely is wide enough to hold both thee and me.

Heaven be their resource who have no other but the charity of the world, the stock of which, I fear, is no way sufficient for the many great claims which are hourly made upon it.

Is this a fit time, said my father to himself, to talk of Pensions and Grenadiers?