You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.

The use of knowledge in our sex (beside the amusement of solitude) is to moderate the passions and learn to be contented with a small expense, which are the certain effects of a studious life and, it may be, preferable even to that fame which men have engrossed to themselves and will not suffer us to share.

There is no remedy so easy as books, which if they do not give cheerfulness, at least restore quiet to the most troubled mind.

Miserable is the fate of writers: if they are agreeable, they are offensive; and if dull, they starve.

And we meet, with champagne and a chicken, at last.

I believe more follies are committed out of complaisance to the world, than in following our own inclinations.

True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words.