My only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.

There is no act, however virtuous, for which ingenuity may not find some bad motive.

Men are disposed to live honestly, if the means of doing so are open to them.

Chemistry is yet, indeed, a mere embryon. Its principles are contested; experiments seem contradictory; their subjects are so minute as to escape our senses; and their result too fallacious to satisfy the mind. It is probably an age too soon to propose the establishment of a system.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has passed two or three thousand years ago, than in what is now passing. I read nothing, therefore, but of the heroes of Troy, ... of Pompey and Caesar, and of Augustus too.

On a hot day in Virginia, I know nothing more comforting than a fine spiced pickle, brought up trout-like from the sparkling depths of the aromatic jar below the stairs of Aunt Sally's cellar.