I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

And as hearbes and trees are bettered and fortified by being transplanted, so formes of speach are embellished and graced by variation.... As in our ordinary language, we shall sometimes meete with excellent phrases, and quaint metaphors, whose blithnesse fadeth through age, and colour is tarnish by to common using them.

A good marriage (if any there be) refuses the conditions of love and endeavors to present those of amity.

Those sciences which govern the morals of mankind, such as Theology and Philosophy, make everything their concern: no activity is so private or so secret as to escape their attention or their jurisdiction.

The common notions that we find in credit around us and infused into our souls by our fathers' seed, these seem to be the universal and natural ones. Whence it comes to pass that what is off the hinges of custom, people believe to be off the hinges of reason.

If there is such a thing as a good marriage, it is because it resembles friendship rather than love.

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