"There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex."

"[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other."

"Distance has the same effect on the mind as on the eye."

"Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend."

"A tavern chair is the throne of human felicity."

"By seeing London, I have seen as much of life as the world can show."

"Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is a scoundrel."

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

"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."

"There are some sluggish men who are improved by drinking; as there are fruits that are not good until they are rotten."

"Books like friends, should be few and well-chosen."

"I will be conquered; I will not capitulate."

"No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library."

"He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything."

"I had done all that I could, and no Man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little."

"Languages are the pedigree of nations."

"When speculation has done its worst two and two still make four."

"A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner."

"Marriages would in general be as happy and often more so if they were all made by the Lord Chancellor."

"He that reads and grows no wiser seldom suspects his own deficiency, but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood."

"The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book I assure you."