I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.

Better to die ten thousand deaths than wound my honor.

A woman seldom asks advice before she has bought her wedding clothes.

An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.

I value my garden more for being full of blackbirds than of cherries, and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

Modesty is not only an ornament, but also a guard to virtue.

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Jesters do often prove prophets.