There is no one who does not represent a danger to someone.

If we could have a little patience, we should escape much mortification; time takes away as much as it gives.

. . .the most astonishing, the most surprising, the most marvelous, the most miraculous. . . the greatest, the least, the rarest, the most common, the most public, the most private till today. . . I cannot bring myself to tell you: guess what it is.

... we ought to be astonished at nothing; for what do we not meet with in our journey through life?

Ah, what a grudge I owe physicians! what mummery is their art!

Were it not for the amusement of our books, we should be moped to death for want of occupation. It rains incessantly. ... we tickle ourselves in order to laugh; to so low an ebb are we reduced.

. . . 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.