If the human mind naturally produces noisome weeds, it also produces flowers and fruit; and ... the best method to mend the soil in general, is for each of us to cultivate his own particular spot.

Taste may be compared to that exquisite sense of the bee, which instantly discovers and extracts the quintessence of every flower, and disregards all the rest of it.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter; is he not also the only one that deserves to be laughed at?

Habit is the cement of society, the comfort of life, and, alas! The root of error.

O wearisome condition of humanity! Born under one law, to another bound; Vainly begot and yet forbidden vanity; Created sick, commanded to be sound.

Man is said to be a rational creature; but should it not rather be said, that man is a creature capable of being rational, as we say a parrot is a creature capable of speech?

The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.

The criterion of true beauty is that it increases on examination; if false, that it lessens.

There are sometimes beauties in a character which would never have appeared but for a defect, and defects which would never have appeared but for a beauty.

Love will sacrifice more to others than friendship, but then it exacts more from them.

How happy is it for us, that the admiration of others should depend so much more on their ignorance than our perfection!

Heaven is an idea constructed by man to help him cope with the fact that life on earth is both brutally short and, paradoxically, far too long.

I love new clothes. If everyone could just wear new clothes everyday, I reckon depression wouldn’t exist anymore.

Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrowsStrike heaven on the face, that it resoundsAs if it felt with Scotland, and yelled outLike syllable of dolor.

It is one thing to believe in justification by faith, it is another thing to be justified by faith.

Having failed to conquer myself, my best hope now is to arrange an alliance with myself.

A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.

One of the many divine qualities of the Bible is that it does not yield its secrets to the irreverent and the censorious.

Fortune, not wisdom, rules lives.

If you are good for nothing else, you can still serve as a bad example.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"