There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

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.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

He is not only dull himself, but the cause of dulness in others.

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

Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.