The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little.

I seek in the reading of books, only to please myself, by an honest diversion.

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that tied them together.

It makes me hate accepting things that are probable when they are held up before me as infallibly true. I prefer these words which tone down and modify the hastiness of our propositions: "Perhaps, In some sort, Some, They say, I think," and the like.

When we see a man with bad shoes, we say it is no wonder, if he is a shoemaker.

Our thoughts are always elsewhere; we are stayed and supported by the hope for a better life, or by the hope that our children will turn out well, or that our name will be famous in the future, or that we shall escape the evils of this life, or that vengeance threatens those who are the cause of our death.

No man is a hero to his own valet.