To govern mankind, one must not overrate them.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

Being pretty on the inside means you don't hit your brother and you eat all your peas - that's what my grandma taught me.

I am grown old, and have possibly lost a great deal of that fire, which formerly made me love fire in others at any rate, and however attended with smoke: but now I must have all sense, and cannot, for the sake of five righteous lines, forgive a thousand absurd ones.

Many young people adopt pleasures for which they have not the least taste, only because they are called by that name.... You mustallow that drunkenness, which is equally destructive to body and mind, is a fine pleasure. Gaming, that draws you into a thousand scraps, leaves you penniless, and gives you the air and manners of an outrageous madman, is another most exquisite pleasure, is it not? As to running after women, the consequences of that vice are only the loss of one's nose, the total destruction of health, and, not unfrequently, the being run through the body.

Prepare yourself for the world, as athletes used to do for their exercises; oil your mind and your manners, to give them the necessary suppleness and flexibility; strength alone will not do.

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.