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

Men’s arguments often prove nothing but their wishes.

Wit may do very well for a mistress, but I should prefer reason for a wife.

Women that are the least bashful are often the most modest.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.

A public debt is a kind of anchor in the storm; but if the anchor be too heavy for the vessel, she will be sunk by that very weight which was intended for her preservation.

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and will not know them because we hate them.

To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

A house may draw visitors, but it is the possessor alone that can detain them.

We are more inclined to hate one another for points on which we differ, than to love one another for points on which we agree.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.

Immitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Diffidence is the better part of knowledge.

Justice to my readers compels me to admit that I write because I have nothing to do; justice to myself induces me to add that I will cease to write the moment I have nothing to say.

War is a game in which princes seldom win, the people never.

When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.

Men keep their agreements when it is an advantage to both parties not to break them; and I shall so frame my laws that it will be evident to the Athenians that it will be for their interest to observe them.

Men keep agreements when it is to the advantage of neither to break them.

I really liked one girl and asked her out 22 times, but she always said no. Finally I sang to her, and she said she’d go out with me.

Most of us believe everyone has a right to his own opinion – as long as it agrees with ours.

If we cannot agree, let us at any rate agree to differ, but let us part as friends.

I read every agreement of every contract. Anything I put my signature on, I really do read them. And I find things.

Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.