..a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will.

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

The curiosity of knowing things has been given to man for a scourge.

It is a human tendency "to measure truth and error by our capacity."

Obstinacy and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so stubborn, obstinate, disdainful, contemplative, grave, or serious, as an ass?

Other passions have objects to flatter them, and seem to content and satisfy them for a while; there is power in ambition, pleasure in luxury, and pelf in covetousness; but envy can gain nothing but vexation.

The world is but a perennial movement. All things in it are in constant motion-the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the pyramids of Egypt-both with the common motion and with their own.