A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

We should be similarly wary of accepting common opinions; we should judge them by the ways of reason not by popular vote.

We hold death, poverty, and grief for our principal enemies; but this death, which some repute the most dreadful of all dreadful things, who does not know that others call it the only secure harbor from the storm and tempests of life, the sovereign good of nature, the sole support of liberty, and the common and sudden remedy of all evils?

My art and profession is to live.

There is no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live this life well and naturally.

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game.