Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

They who have already enjoyed the crowds and noise of the great city, know their desire to return is little more than the restlessness of a vacant mind, that they are not so much led by hope as driven by disgust, and wish rather to leave the country than to see the town.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

Every man has frequent grievances which only the solicitude of friendship will discover and remedy, and which would remain for ever unheeded in the mighty heap of human calamity, were it only surveyed by the eye of general benevolence equally attentive to every misery.

Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.