Lay a beam between these two towers of such width as we need to walk on: there is no philosophical wisdom of such great firmness that it can give us courage to walk on it as we should if it were on the ground.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

I agree that we should work and prolong the functions of life as far as we can, and hope that Death may find me planting my cabbages, but indifferent to him and still more to the unfinished state of my garden.

A learned man is not learned in all things; but a sufficient man is sufficient throughout, even to ignorance itself.

There is no so wretched and coarse a soul wherein some particular faculty is not seen to shine.

Marriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.

I admire the assurance and confidence everyone has in himself, whereas there is hardly anything I am sure I know or that I dare give my word I can do.