It is better to live rich than to die rich.
A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.
All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.
Revenge is an act of passion; vengeance of justice. Injuries are revenged; crimes are avenged.
He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Wine makes a man more pleased with himself; I do not say it makes him more pleasing to others.
It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.
By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.
You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.
Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.
So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.
The usual fortune of complaint is to excite contempt more than pity.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.
I will be conquered; I will not capitulate.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.
What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.
No man can taste the fruits of autumn while he is delighting his scent with the flowers of spring.
A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.
Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.
If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.
He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.
I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.
There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.
Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.
A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.
A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.
All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.
To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.