Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.

Love is only one of many passions.

I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of the earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote.

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

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.