How small of all that human hearts endure/That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.

Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.