The only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Perhaps the excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some obvious and useful truth in a few words.We frequently fall into error and folly, not because the true principles of action are not known, but because, for a time, they are not remembered; and he may therefore be justly numbered among the benefactors of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and taught by frequent recollection to recur habitually to the mind.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life . . . the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.