The feeling of friendship is like that of being comfortably filled with roast beef; love, like being enlivened with champagne.

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself left alone. A man, sir, should keep his friendship in a constant repair.

Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

My dear friend, clear your mind of cant.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Exercise is labor without weariness.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

What is easy is seldom excellent.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

There is no private house in which people can enjoy themselves so well as at a capital tavern... No, Sir; there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.

Treating your adversary with respect is striking soft in battle.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.

The future is purchased by the present.

Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth.

You can't be in politics unless you can walk in a room and know in a minute who's for you and who's against you.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven't courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Many things difficult to design prove easy to performance.