Now ... that you are going to marry, do not expect more from life, than life will afford.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

Some read for style, and some for argument: one has little care about the sentiment, he observes only how it is expressed; another regards not the conclusion, but is diligent to mark how it is inferred; they read for other purposes than the attainment of practical knowledge; and are no more likely to grow wise by an examination of a treatise of moral prudence, than an architect to inflame his devotion by considering attentively the proportions of a temple.

I would advise you, Sir, to study algebra, if you are not an adept already in it: your head would get less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbours about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow.

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

Prejudice is a great time-saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts. Prejudice not being founded on reason cannot be removed by argument.