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

I set forth notions that are human and my own, simply as human notions considered in themselves, not as determined and decreed by heavenly ordinance.

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough.

I would rather be old for a shorter time than be old before my time.

Laws gain their authority from actual possession and custom: it is perilous to go back to their origins; laws, like our rivers, get greater and nobler as they roll along: follow them back upstream to their sources and all you find is a tiny spring, hardly recognizable; as time goes by it swells with pride and grows in strength.

Is it reasonable that even the arts should take advantage of and profit by our natural stupidity and feebleness of mind?

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.