"It is good to love the unknown."

"I could never hate anyone I knew."

"Anything awful makes me laugh. I misbehaved once at a funeral."

"The measure of choosing well, is, whether a man likes and finds good in what he has chosen."

"The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth."

"Shakespeare is one of the last books one should like to give up, perhaps the one just before the Dying Service in a large Prayer book."

"My motto is: Contented with little, yet wishing for more."

"I have had playmates, I have had companions; In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days - All, all are gone, the old familiar faces."

"Man is a gaming animal. He must always be trying to get the better in something or other."

"The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive - you are leaking."

"The beggar wears all colors fearing none."

"Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts."

"We grow gray in our spirit long before we grow gray in our hair."

"The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend."

"A pun is not bound by the laws which limit nicer wit. It is a pistol let off at the ear; not a feather to tickle the intellect."

"To be sick is to enjoy monarchical prerogatives."

"Some people have a knack of putting upon you gifts of no real value, to engage you to substantial gratitude. We thank them for nothing."

"Clap an extinguisher upon your irony if you are unhappily blessed with a vein of it."

"Here cometh April again, and as far as I can see the world hath more fools in it than ever."

"The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street."

"Pain is life - the sharper, the more evidence of life."

"What is reading, but silent conversation."

"Let us live for the beauty of our own reality."

"She unbent her mind afterwards - over a book."

"New Year's Day is every man's birthday."

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

"I am determined that my children shall be brought up in their father's religion, if they can find out what it is."

"Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant. If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves."

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

"It is not from reason and prudence that people marry, but from inclination."

"Marriage is the best state for man in general, and every man is a worst man in proportion to the level he is unfit for marriage."

"I would advise you Sir, to study algebra, if you are not already an adept in it: your head would be less muddy, and you will leave off tormenting your neighbors about paper and packthread, while we all live together in a world that is bursting with sin and sorrow."

"Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rule of composition; it produces vigilance rather than elevation; rather prevents loss than procures advantage; and often miscarriages, but seldom reaches either power or honor."

"Prudence keeps life safe, but it does not often make it happy."

"Their learning is like bread in a besieged town: every man gets a little, but no man gets a full meal."

"The traveler that resolutely follows a rough and winding path will sooner reach the end of his journey than he that is always changing his direction, and wastes the hour of daylight in looking for smoother ground and shorter passages."

"A Judge may be a farmer; but he is not to geld his own pigs. A Judge may play a little at cards for his own amusement; but he is not to play at marbles, or chuck farthing in the Piazza."

"What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company."

"I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney."

"Lawyers know life practically. A bookish man should always have them to converse with."

"Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible."

"Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark."

"One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich."

"It is wonderful to think how men of very large estates not only spend their yearly income, but are often actually in want of money. It is clear, they have not value for what they spend."

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

"What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written."

"The true art of memory is the art of attention."

"Worth seeing? Yes; but not worth going to see."

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

"The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are."