“We are as liable to be corrupted by books, as by companions.”

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.

When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief.

There’s one fool at least in every married couple.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

Enough is equal to a feast.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

There cannot be a move glorious object in creation than a human being replete with benevolence, meditating in what manner he might render himself most acceptable to his Creator by doing most good to His creatures.

Fashion is the science of appearance, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.

The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

Every book is a children’s book if the kid can read!

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.

Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don’t talk back.

He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.

To write that essential book, a great writer does not need to invent it but merely to translate it, since it already exists in each one of us. The duty and task of a writer are those of translator.

I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.