No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

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

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

How can children credit the assertions of parents, which their own eyes show them to be false? Few parents act in such a manner as much to enforce their maxims by the credit of their lives

Those whose abilities or knowledge incline them most to deviate from the general round of life are recalled from eccentricity by the laws of their existence.

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.

As long as one lives he will have need of repentance.