The worst condition of humans is when they lose knowledge and control of themselves.

Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.

Marriage has, for its share, usefulness, justice, honour, and constancy; a stale but more durable pleasure. Love is grounded on pleasure alone, and it is indeed more gratifying to the senses, keener and more acute; a pleasure stirred and kept alive by difficulties. There must be a sting and a smart in it. It ceases to be love if it has no shafts and no fire.

The most fruitful and natural exercise for our minds is, in my opinion, conversation.

All we do is to look after the opinions and learning of others: we ought to make them our own.

Those who make a practice of comparing human actions are never so perplexed as when they try to see them as a whole and in the same light; for they commonly contradict each other so strangely that it seems impossible that they have come from the same shop.

He was doubtless an understanding Fellow that said, there was no happy Marriage but betwixt a blind Wife and a deaf Husband.