"No wise man ever wished to be younger."

"Proper words in proper places make the true definition of a style."

"Censure is the tax a man pays to the public for being eminent."

"We of this age have discovered a shorter, and more prudent method to become scholars and wits, without the fatigue of reading or of thinking."

"Brutes find out where their talents lie a bear will not attempt to fly."

"Positiveness is a good quality for preachers and speakers because, whoever shares his thoughts with the public will convince them as he himself appears convinced."

"The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes."

"I know Sir John will go though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs."

"Once kick the world, and the world and you will live together at a reasonably good understanding."

"It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not."

"Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride."

"Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age."

"There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency."

"That was excellently observed', say I, when I read a passage in an author, where his opinion agrees with mine. When we differ, there I pronounce him to be mistaken."

"I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing."

"Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through."

"When a great genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against."

"As blushing will sometimes make a whore pass for a virtuous woman, so modesty may make a fool seem a man of sense."

"He likewise directed, "that every senator in the great council of a nation, after he had delivered his opinion, and argued in the defence of it, should be obliged to give his vote directly contrary; because if that were done, the result would infallibly terminate in the good of the public."

"That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy."

"When the world has once begun to use us ill, it afterwards continues the same treatment with less scruple or ceremony, as men do to a whore."

"And he gave it for his opinion that whoever could make two ears of corn or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before would deserve better of mankind and do more essential service to his country than the whole race of politicians put together."

"The tiny Lilliputians surmise that Gulliver's watch may be his god, because it is that which, he admits, he seldom does anything without consulting."

"The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman."

"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."

"If Heaven had looked upon riches to be a valuable thing, it would not have given them to such a scoundrel."

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

"A wise person should have money in their head, but not in their heart."

"Although men are accused of not knowing their own weakness, yet perhaps few know their own strength. It is in men as in soils, where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not of."

"For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery."

"One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good."

"Coffee makes us severe, and grave and philosophical."

"Principally I hate and detest that animal called man; although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, and so forth."

"Don't set your wit against a child."

"It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom."

"Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting."

"As love without esteem is capricious and volatile; esteem without love is languid and cold."

"A man should never be ashamed to own that he has been in the wrong, which is but saying... that he is wiser today than yesterday."

"The proper words in the proper places are the true definition of style."

"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead."

"Here commences a new dominion acquired with a title by divine right. Ships are sent with the first opportunity; the natives driven out or destroyed; their princes tortured to discover their gold; a free license given to all acts of inhumanity and lust, the earth reeking with the blood of its inhabitants: and this execrable crew of butchers, employed in so pious an expedition, is a modern colony, sent to convert and civilize an idolatrous and barbarous people!"

"A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart."

"I heard the little bird say so."

"Take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion, form a judgment of their thoughts and designs; because men are never so serious, thoughtful, and intent, as when they are at stool..."

"We are so fond of each other because our ailments are the same."

"What some invent the rest enlarge."

"They look upon fraud as a greater crime than theft, and therefore seldom fail to punish it with death; for they allege, that care and vigilance, with a very common understanding, may preserve a man's goods from thieves, but honesty has no defence against superior cunning; and, since it is necessary that there should be a perpetual intercourse of buying and selling, and dealing upon credit, where fraud is permitted and connived at, or has no law to punish it, the honest dealer is always undone, and the knave gets the advantage."

"Where there are large powers with little ambition... nature may be said to have fallen short of her purposes."

"The want of belief is a defect that ought to be concealed when it cannot be overcome."

"It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind."