The way to get on in the world is to be neither more nor less wise, neither better nor worse than your neighbours.

To be happy, we must be true to nature and carry our age along with us.

There is a quiet repose and steadiness about the happiness of age, if the life has been well spent. Its feebleness is not painful. The nervous system has lost its acuteness. But, in mature years we feel that a burn, a scald, a cut, is more tolerable than it was in the sensitive period of youth.

That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.

The pleasure of hating, like a poisonous mineral, eats into the heart of religion, and turns it to ranking spleen and bigotry; it makes patriotism an excuse for carrying fire, pestilence, and famine into other lands: it leaves to virtue nothing but the spirit of censoriousness.

Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not contradict him, but we dare hardly disbelieve him to his face. A lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant.

Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.