What happiness is there which is not purchased with more or less of pain?

It has been my fate in a long life of production to be credited chiefly with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality so excellent in morals, so little satisfactory in art.

Temptations come, as a general rule, when they are sought.

every generation has a conceit of itself which elevates it, in its own opinion, above that which comes after it.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case.

There is nothing so costly as bargains.

The ideal is the flower-garden of the mind, and very apt to run to weeds unless carefully tended.