Domestic discord is not inevitably and fatally necessary; but yet it is not easy to avoid.

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.

There are few so free from vanity as not to dictate to those who will hear their instructions with a visible sense of their own beneficence.

He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.

Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas.

He endearing elegance of female friendship.