he who seeks pleasure with reference to himself, not others, will ever find that pleasure is only another name for discontent.

Consistency is a human word, but it certainly expresses nothing human.

I cannot see why a taste for the country should be held so very indispensable a requisite for excellence; but really people talk of it as if it were a virtue, and as if an opposite opinion was, to say the least of it, very immoral.

ingratitude is the necessary consequence of receiving favors of which we are ashamed.

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and the despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.

Suicide and antipathy to fires in a bedroom seem to be among the national characteristics. Perhaps the same moral cause may originate both.

to the many, witticisms not only require to be explained, like riddles, but are also like new shoes, which people require to wear many times before they get accustomed to them.