All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Being married to those sleepy-souled women is just like playing at cards for nothing: no passion is excited and the time is filled up. I do not, however, envy a fellow one of those honeysuckle wives for my part, as they are but creepers at best and commonly destroy the tree they so tenderly cling about.

As all error is meanness, it is incumbent on every man who consults his own dignity, to retract it as soon as he discovers it.

In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity; and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort; as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags.

That we must all die, we always knew, I wish I had sooner remembred it.

I doubt if there ever was a man who was not gratified by being told that he was liked by the women.

Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past.