“I’m as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.”

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

Ay, do despise me, I’m the prouder for it; I like to be despised.

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.

Vision is seeing the invisible.

There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.

How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.

If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.

Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.

It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.