To act with common sense, according to the moment, is the best wisdom; and the best philosophy is to do one's duties, to take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is.
We are largely the playthings of our fears. To one, fear of the dark; to another, of physical pain; to a third, of public ridicule; to a fourth, of poverty; to a fifth, of loneliness ... for all of us, our particular creature waits in ambush.
Old friends are the great blessing of one's later years. ... They have a memory of the same events and have the same mode of thinking.
The best philosophy is to do one's duties, to take the world as it comes, submit respectfully to one's lot, and bless the goodness that has given us so much happiness with it, whatever it is.
The world is a tragedy to those who feel, but a comedy to those who think.
In science, mistakes always precede the truth.
He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.
Pictures may serve as helps to religion but are only an appendix to idolatry, for the people must be taught to believe in false gods and in the power of saints before they will learn to worship their images.
Plot, rules, nor even poetry, are not half so great beauties in tragedy or comedy as a just imitation of nature, of character, of the passions and their operations in diversified situations.
Poetry is a beautiful way of spoiling prose, and the laborious art of exchanging plain sense for harmony.
Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he isn't. A sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.
By deafness one gains in one respect more than one loses; one misses more nonsense than sense.
It was said of old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, that she never puts dots over her I s, to save ink.
When a Frenchman reads of the garden of Eden, I do not doubt but he concludes it was something approaching to that of Versailles, with clipped hedges, berceaus, and trellis work.
How well Shakespeare knew how to improve and exalt little circumstances, when he borrowed them from circumstantial or vulgar historians.
I avoid talking before the youth of the age as I would dancing before them: for if one's tongue don't move in the steps of the day, and thinks to please by its old graces, it is only an object of ridicule.
I never found even in my juvenile hours that it was necessary to go a thousand miles in search of themes for moralizing.
He would be a very absurd legislator who should pretend to set bounds to his country's welfare, lest it should perish by knowing no bounds.
Oh that I were seated as high as my ambition, I'd place my naked foot on the necks of monarchs.
Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth.
