It is equally pointless to weep because we won't be alive a hundred years from now as that we were not here a hundred years ago.

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from Custom.

It is very easy to accuse a government of imperfection, for all mortal things are full of it.

Business in a certain sort of men is a mark of understanding, and they are honored for it. Their souls seek repose in agitation, as children do by being rocked in a cradle. They may pronounce themselves as serviceable to their friends as troublesome to themselves. No one distributes his money to others, but every one therein distributes his time and his life. There is nothing of which we are so prodigal as of those two things, of which to be thrifty would be both commendable and useful.

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.

We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.

Even in the midst of compassion we feel within I know not what tart sweet titillation of malicious pleasure in seeing others suffer; children have the same feeling.