Human wisdom makes as ill use of her talent when she exercises it in rescinding from the number and sweetness of those pleasures that are naturally our due, as she employs it favorably and well in artificially disguising and tricking out the ills of life to alleviate the sense of them.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.

Whether the events in our life are good or bad, greatly depends on the way we perceive them.

I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute.

Knowledge is an excellent drug; but no drug has virtue enough to preserve itself from corruption and decay, if the vessel be tainted and impure wherein it is put to keep.

He that had never seen a river, imagined the first he met with to be the sea.

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