"A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other."

"While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best."

"Abstinence is as easy for me as temperance would be difficult."

"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye, and while we glide along the stream of time, whatever we leave behind us is always lessening, and that which we approach increasing in magnitude."

"Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us."

"Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters."

"PU'RIST: one superstitiously nice in the use of words."

"Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth."

"Hope is itself a species of happiness and perhaps the chief happiness which this world affords."

"Your manuscript is both good and original but the parts that are good are not original and the parts that are original are not good."

"I have found men to be more kind than I expected, and less just."

"It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends."

"Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test."

"Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance."

"Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks."

"Every state of society is as luxurious as it can be. Men always take the best they can get."

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

"Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it."

"Men are like stone jugs - you may lug them where you like by the ears."

"We are told, that the subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

"Without frugality none can be rich, and with it very few would be poor."

"Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent."

"The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it."

"Pleasure, in itself harmless, may become mischievous, by endearing to us a state which we know to be transient and probatory, and withdrawing our thoughts from that of which every hour brings us nearer to the beginning, and of which no length of time will bring us to the end. Mortification is not virtuous in itself, nor has any other use, but that it disengages us from the allurements of sense. In the state of future perfection, to which we all aspire, there will be pleasure without danger, and security without restraint."

"My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

"The trappings of a monarchy would set up an ordinary commonwealth."

"The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty."

"It is better to live rich than to die rich."

"Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind."

"Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him."

"The future is purchased by the present."

"Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself."

"It is common to overlook what is near by keeping the eye fixed on something remote."

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

"Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement."

"Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so."

"Present opportunities are neglected and attainable good is slighted by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages."

"Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own."

"No one is much pleased with a companion who does not increase, in some respect, their fondness for themselves."

"There can be no friendship without confidence, and no confidence without integrity."

"Language is the dress of thought."

"Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost."

"So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other."

"In a man's letters his soul lies naked."

"A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk."

"Round numbers are always false."

"There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman."

"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

"Life cannot subsist in society but by reciprocal concessions."

"Marriage has many pains but celibacy has no pleasures."