To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

There are innumerable questions to which the inquisitive mind can in this state receive no answer: Why do you and I exist? Why was this world created? Since it was to be created, why was it not created sooner?

Politeness is one of those advantages which we never estimate rightly but by the inconvenience of its loss.

No mind is much employed upon the present; recollection and anticipation fill up almost all our moments.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

Never believe extraordinary characters which you hear of people. Depend upon it, they are exaggerated. You do not see one man shoot a great deal higher than another.