“Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.”

Were I to prescribe a rule for drinking, it should be formed upon a saying quoted by Sir William Temple: the first glass for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the fourth for mine enemies.

There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.

Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.

According to this definition there is nothing so contradictory to his nature as error and falsehood.

There is something very sublime, though very fanciful, in Plato’s description of the Supreme Being,–that truth is His body and light His shadow.

Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.

Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.

A man who has any relish for fine writing either discovers new beauties or receives stronger impressions from the masterly strokes of a great author every time he peruses him; besides that he naturally wears himself into the same manner of speaking and thinking.

There is noting truly valuable which can be purchased without pains and labor. The gods have set a price upon every real and noble pleasure.

Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.

The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.

No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.

Pedantry in learning is like hypocrisy inn religion–a form of knowledge without the power of it.

If it were not for the company of fools, a witty man would often be greatly at a loss.

The intellect is always fooled by the heart.

The heart is forever making the head its fool.

Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

If there was a fool who wanted to stand in front and break an ankle, tough luck.

O fools, awake! The rites ye sacred hold Are but a cheat contrived by men of old Who lusted after wealth and gained their lust And died in baseness-and their law is dust.

O Reason, thou (alone) speakest the truth. Then perish the fools who forged the (religious) traditions or interpreted them!