The best way to compel weak-minded people to adopt our opinion, is to frighten them from all others, by magnifying their danger.

Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial.

Good humor is the health of the soul, sadness is its poison.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

Choose your pleasures for yourself, and do not let them be imposed upon you.

Half the business is done, when one has gained the heart and the affections of those with whom one is to transact it.

A learned parson, rusting in his cell at Oxford or Cambridge, will reason admirably well upon the nature of man; will profoundly analyze the head, the heart, the reason, the will, the passions, the senses, the sentiments, and all those subdivisions of we know not what ; and yet, unfortunately, he knows nothing of man... He views man as he does colours in Sir Isaac Newton's prism, where only the capital ones are seen; but an experienced dyer knows all their various shades and gradations, together with the result of their several mixtures.