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

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

We are so fond on one another because our ailments are the same.

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

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

Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.

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.

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.

Books, the children of the brain.

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

There were many times my pants were so thin I could sit on a dime and tell if it was heads or tails.

Vanity is a mark of humility rather than of pride.

Good manners is the art of making those people easy with whom we converse. Whoever makes the fewest people uneasy is the best bred in the room.

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

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.

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

Human brutes, like other beasts, find snares and poison in the provision of life, and are allured by their appetites to their destruction.

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

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

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

He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue.

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

May you live all the days of your life.

No wise man ever wished to be younger.

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

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.

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

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.

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

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

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.

He was a bold man that first eat an oyster.

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

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

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

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

Every dog must have his day.

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

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

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

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.

I wonder what fool it was that first invented kissing.

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

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.

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

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.

Observation is an old man's memory.

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