The character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done.

We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.

As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race.

I dare say that I have worked off my fundamental formula on you that the chief end of man is to frame general propositions and that no general proposition is worth a damn.

Certainty generally is illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man.

Any tax is a discouragement and therefore a regulation so far as it goes.

There are three natural anaesthetics: Sleep, fainting, and death.