When there is no hope, there can be no endeavor.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Players, Sir! I look on them as no better than creatures set upon tables and joint stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs.

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

A small country town is not the place in which one would choose to quarrel with a wife; every human being in such places is a spy.

The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties.