“Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.”

Now in reality, the world has paid too great a compliment to critics, and has imagined them to be men of much greater profundity than they really are.

A beau is everything of a woman but the sex, and nothing of a man beside it.

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.

Never trust the man who has reason to suspect that you know he hath injured you.

What is commonly called love, namely the desire of satisfying a voracious appetite with a certain quantity of delicate white human flesh.

LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.

The highest friendship must always lead us to the highest pleasure.

The greatest part of mankind labor under one delirium or another; and Don Quixote differed from the rest, not in madness, but the species of it. The covetous, the prodigal, the superstitious, the libertine, and the coffee-house politician, are all Quixotes in their several ways.

A man may go to heaven with half the pains it cost him to purchase hell.

No one hath seen beauty in its highest lustre who hath never seen it in distress.

We must eat to live, and not live to eat.

Wisdom is the talent of buying virtuous pleasures at the cheapest rate.

A wonder lasts but nine days, and then the puppy’s eyes are open.

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by tenderness of the best hearts.

The life of a coquette is one constant lie; and the only rule by which you can form any correct judgment of them is that they are never what they seem.

The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.

Let me define prayer for you in this show. Prayer is man giving God permission or license to interfere in earth’s affairs. In other words, prayer is earthly license for heavenly interference.

I know you’re shining down on me from Heaven, like so many friends we’ve lost along the way. And I know eventually we’ll be together, one sweet day.

You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven.

All places shall be hell that are not heaven.

If there’s a God in heaven, what’s he waiting for? If He can’t hear the children, then he must see the war.

We know that Heaven chastens those whom it loves best; being pleased by repeated trials, to make pure spirits more pure.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

My dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heav’n is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blest with health, and peace, and sweet content!