Books, like proverbs, receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they passed.
— William Temple
I have always looked upon alchemy in natural philosophy to be like enthusiasm in divinity, and to have troubled the world much to the same purpose.
Man's wisdom is his best friend; folly his worst enemy.
When I pray, coincidences happen, and when I don't, they don't.
The first ingredient in conversation is truth, the next good sense, the third good humor, and the fourth wit.
Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
You may keep your beauty and your health, unless you destroy them yourself, or discourage them to stay with you, by using them ill.
Authority is by nothing so much strengthened and confirmed as by custom; for no man easily distrusts the things which he and all men have been always bred up to.
The problem of evil... Why does God permit it? Or, if God is omnipotent, in which case permission and creation are the same, why did God create it?
No one ever was a great poet, that applied himself much to anything else.
There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
The only way for a rich man to be healthy is by exercise and abstinence, to live as if he were poor.
The most influential of all educational factors is the conversation in a child's home.
Our present time is indeed a criticizing and critical time, hovering between the wish, and the inability to believe. Our complaints are like arrows shot up into the air at no target: and with no purpose they only fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.
The best rules to form a young man, are, to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.
When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.
The first glass is for myself, the second for my friends, the third for good humor, and the forth for my enemies.
