As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.

Only a mother knows a mother's fondness.

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.

Making verses is almost as common as taking snuff, and God can tell what miserable stuff people carry about in their pockets, and offer to all their acquaintances, and you know one cannot refuse reading and taking a pinch.

People commonly educate their children as they build their houses, according to some plan they think beautiful, without considering whether it is suited to the purposes for which they are designed.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.