"Bread is the staff of life."

"I have one word to say upon the subject of profound writers, who are grown very numerous of late; and I know very well the judicious world is resolved to list me in that number. I conceive therefore, as to the business of being profound, that it is with writers as with wells; a person with good eyes may see to the bottom of the deepest, provided any water be there; and often, when there is nothing in the world at the bottom, besides dryness and dirt, though it be but a yard and half under ground, it shall pass however for wondrous deep, upon no wiser a reason than because it is wondrous dark."

"I never saw, heard, nor read, that the clergy were beloved in any nation where Christianity was the religion of the country. Nothing can render them popular, but some degree of persecution."

"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."

"Books, the children of the brain."

"As learnA d commentators viewIn Homer more than Homer knew."

"They say fingers were made before forks and hands before knives."

"If a man makes me keep my distance, the comfort is, he keeps his at the same time."

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

"Usually speaking the worst-bred person in company is a young traveller just returned from abroad."

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

"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."

"Judges... are picked out from the most dextrous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favoring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing any thing unbecoming their nature in office."

"I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning."

"It is a miserable thing to live in suspense, it is the life of the spider."

"The first springs of great events like those of great rivers are often mean and little."

"Every dog must have his day."

"He put this engine [a silver pocket watch] into our ears, which made an incessant noise, like that of a water-mill: and we conjecture it is either some unknown animal, or the god that he worships; but we are more inclined to the latter opinion, because he assured us, (if we understood him right, for he expressed himself very imperfectly) that he seldom did any thing without consulting it. He called it his oracle, and said, it pointed out the time for every action of his life."

"Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken."

"Zsa Zsa Gabor when asked which of the Gabor women was the oldest said "She'll never admit it but I believe it is Mama." When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings."

"What they do in heaven we are ignorant of; what they do not do we are told expressly."

"Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own."

"The latter part of a wise person's life is occupied with curing the follies, prejudices and false opinions they contracted earlier."

"No man was ever so completely skilled in the conduct of life, as not to receive new information from age and experience."

"But by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."

"Gulliver describes a royal personage inspiring awe among the tiny Lilliputians because he was taller than his brethren by the breadth of a human fingernail."

"We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

"Nothing is so hard for those who abound in riches as to conceive how others can be in want."

"The power of fortune is confessed only by the miserable, for the happy impute all their success to prudence or merit."

"He was a bold man that first eat an oyster."

"Tis an old maxim in the schools That flattery's the food of fools - Yet now and then your men of wit Will condescend to take a bit."

"Words are but wind; and learning is nothing but words; ergo, learning is nothing but wind."

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."

"There are certain common privileges of a writer, the benefit whereof Ihope there will be no reason to doubt; particularly, that where I am notunderstood, it shall be concluded that something very useful and profoundis couched underneath; and again, that whatever word or sentenceis printed in a different character shall be judged to contain somethingextraordinary either of wit or sublime."

"May you live every day of your life."

"A lie does not consist in the indirect position of words, but in the desire and intention, by false speaking, to deceive and injure your neighbour."

"Under this window in stormy weather I marry this man and woman together; Let none but Him who rules the thunder Put this man and woman asunder."

"Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others."

"Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age."

"Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent."

"When men grow virtuous in their old age they only make a sacrifice to God of the devil's leavings."

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

"May you live all the days of your life."

"For this kind of commodity will not bear exportation, the flesh being of too tender a consistence to admit a long continuance in salt, although perhaps I could name a country which would be glad to eat up our whole nation without it."

"There was all the world and his wife."

"Possession they say is eleven points of the law."

"An excuse is a lie guarded."

"A tavern is a place where madness is sold by the bottle."

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