“I... chose my wife as she did her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but such qualities as would wear well.”
“Whenever you see a gaming table be sure to know fortune is not there. Rather she is always in the company of industry.”
“Some faults are so closely allied to qualities that it is difficult to weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.”
“There are some faults so nearly allied to excellence that we can scarce weed out the vice without eradicating the virtue.”
“For he who fights and runs away May live to fight another day; But he who is in battle slain Can never rise and fight again.”
“Our chief comforts often produce our greatest anxieties, and the increase in our possessions is but an inlet to new disquietudes.”
“I can't say whether we had more wit among us now than usual, but I am certain we had more laughing, which answered the end as well.”
“To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.”
“When lovely woman stoops to folly, and finds too late that men betray, what charm can soothe her melancholy, what art can wash her guilt away?”
“Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.”
“We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.”
“A great source of calamity lies in regret and anticipation; therefore a person is wise who thinks of the present alone, regardless of the past or future.”
“You, that are going to be married, think things can never be done too fast: but we that are old, and know what we are about, must elope methodically, madam.”
“A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond.”
“I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines; and, I believe, Dorothy, you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old wife.”
“As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.”
“Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!”
“If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.”
“Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.”
“She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.”
“There is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that has not at some time been said by some philosopher. Fontenelle says he would undertake to persuade the whole public of readers to believe that the sun was neither the cause of light or heat, if he could only get six philosophers on his side.”
“When any one of our relations was found to be a person of a very bad character, a troublesome guest, or one we desired to get rid of, upon his leaving my house I ever took care to lend him a riding-coat, or a pair of boots, or sometimes a horse of small value, and I always had the satisfaction of finding he never came back to return them.”