No man can have much kindness for him by whom he does not believe himself esteemed, and nothing so evidently proves esteem as imitation.

He that can swim needs not despair to fly; to swim is to fly in a grosser fluid, and to fly is to swim in a subtler. We are only to proportion our power of resistance to the different density of matter through which we are to pass. You will be necessarily upborne by the air if you can renew any impulse upon it faster than the air can recede from the pressure.

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.

The public pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit.

Rain is good for vegetables, and for the animals who eat those vegetables, and for the animals who eat those animals.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

Sir, as a man advances in life, he gets what is better than admiration, - judgement, to estimate things at their true value.