The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Authors and lovers always suffer some infatuation, from which only absence can set them free.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Such is the emptiness of human enjoyment that we are always impatient of the present. Attainment is followed by neglect, and possession by disgust.

Ignorance is mere privation by which nothing can be produced: it is a vacuity in which the soul sits motionless and torpid for want of attraction: and, without knowing why, we always rejoice when we learn, and grieve when we forget.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.

He that is much flattered soon learns to flatter himself.