A man used to vicissitudes is not easily dejected.

It is commonly a weak man who marries for love.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

Men become friends by a community of pleasures.

If a man is in doubt whether it would be better for him to expose himself to martyrdom or not, he should not do it. He must be convinced that he has a delegation from heaven.

Keeping accounts, sir, is of no use when a man is spending his own money, and has nobody to whom he is to account. You won't eat less beef today because you have written down what it cost yesterday.