Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more.

One should be ever booted and spurred and ready to depart.

If atoms do, by chance, happen to combine themselves into so many shapes, why have they never combined together to form a house or a slipper? By the same token, why do we not believe that if innumerable letters of the Greek alphabet were poured all over the market-place they would eventually happen to form the text of the Iliad?

The religion of my doctor or my lawyer cannot matter. That consideration has nothing in common with the functions of the friendship they owe me.

I may indeed very well happen to contradict myself; but truth, as Demades said, I do not contradict.

I am one of those who hold that poetry is never so blithe as in a wanton and irregular subject.

Every abridgement of a good book is a fool abridged.