We are always complaining that our days are few, and acting as though there would be no end to them.

Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.

Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.

There has not been any great talent without an element of madness. -Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit

Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.

Full of men, vacant of friends.

The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depend upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance, and so relinquish a certainty for an uncertainty.