Pleasure is the rock which most young people split upon; they launch out with crowded sails in quest of it, but without a compassto direct their course, or reason sufficient to steer the vessel; for want of which, pain and shame, instead of pleasure, are the returns of their voyage.

Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today.

If you will please people, you must please them in their own way.

The mere brute pleasure of reading - the sort of pleasure a cow must have in grazing.

When griefs are genuine, I find, there is nothing more vacuous, more burdensome, or even more impertinent, than letters of consolation.

Women are all so far Machiavellians that they are never either good or bad by halves; their passions are too strong, and their reason too weak, to do anything with moderation.

Speak of the moderns without contempt and of the ancients without idolatry; judge them all by their merits, but not by their age