Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

Political liberty is only good insofar as it produces private liberty.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

A continual feast of commendation is only to be obtained by merit or by wealth: many are therefore obliged to content themselves with single morsels, and recompense the infrequency of their enjoyment by excess and riot, whenever fortune sets the banquet before them.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.