Death makes us all equal.

Nothing is so capable of overturning a good intention as to show a distrust of it; to be suspected for an enemy, is often sufficient to make a person become one.

. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .

matrimony is a very dangerous disorder; I had rather drink.

I do not like to employ secretaries that have more wit than myself. I am afraid to make them write all my nonsense.

. . . this life is a perpetual chequer-work of good and evil, pleasure and pain. When in possession of what we desire, we are only so much the nearer losing it; and when at a distance from it, we live in expectation of enjoying it again.

There is no real evil in life, except great pain; all the rest is imaginary, and depends on the light in which we view things