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?

No man tells his opinion so freely as when he imagines it received with implicit veneration.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Very few live by choice. Every man is placed in his present condition by causes which acted without his foresight, and with which he did not always willingly cooperate; and therefore you will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his neighbor better than his own.

Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.

Madam, before you flatter a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether or not your flattery is worth his having.