My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.

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

Many a man is mad in certain instances, and goes through life without having it perceived. For example, a madness has seized a person of supposing himself obliged literally to pray continually; had the madness turned the opposite way, and the person thought it a crime ever to pray, it might not improbably have continued unobserved.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

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.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.