“Women do not transgress the bounds of decorum so often as men; but when they do, they go greater lengths.”

Ladies of Fashion starve their happiness to feed their vanity, and their love to feed their pride.

He that studies only men will get the body of knowledge without the soul; and he that studies only books, the soul without the body.

The more gross the fraud the more glibly will it go down, and the more greedily be swallowed, since folly will always find faith where impostors will find imprudence.

Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

Some read to think, these are rare; some to write, these are common; and some read to talk, and these form the great majority.

Unlike the sun, intellectual luminaries shine brightest after they set.

There are male as well as female gossips.

The poorest man would not part with health for money, but the richest would gladly part with all their money for health.

Honor is unstable and seldom the same; for she feeds upon opinion, and is as fickle as her food.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us – never cease to instruct – never cloy.

An honest man will continue to be so though surrounded on all sides by rogues.

Much may be done in those little shreds and patches of time which every day produces, and which most men throw away.

Oppression cannot prosper where none will submit to be enslaved.

He that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others, or with himself.

The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal.

Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

Man is the work of nature, he exists in nature, he is subject to its laws, he can not break free, he can not leave even in thought; it is in vain that his spirit wants to soar beyond the bounds of the visible world, he is always forced to return.

Emptiness is bound to bloom, like hundreds of grasses blossoming.

The lapse of ages changes all things – time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing about, around, and underneath man, except man himself.

The rigid cause themselves to be broken; the pliable cause themselves to be bound.

If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.

Books are a hard-bound drug with no danger of an overdose. I am the happy victim of books.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.

The only limits of power are the bounds of belief.