Life and death appear more certainly ours than whatsoever else; and yet hardly can that be called ours, which comes without our knowledge, and goes without it.

No truer word, save God's, was ever spoken, Than that the largest heart is soonest broken.

As the pearl ripens in the obscurity of its shell, so ripens in the tomb all the fame that is truly precious.

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.

The most pernicious of absurdities is that weak, blind, stupid faith is better than the constant practice of every human virtue.

I never did a single wise thing in the whole course of my existence, although I have written many which have been thought so.

Moroseness is the evening of turbulence.