Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

Old men and comets have been reverenced for the same reason: their long beards, and pretences to foretell events.

If a man would register all his opinions upon love, politics, religion, learning, etc., beginning from his youth, and so go to old age, what a bundle of inconsistencies and contradictions would appear at last!

The various opinions of philosophers have scattered through the world as many plagues of the mind as Pandora's box did those of the body; only with this difference, that they have not left hope at the bottom.

All fits of pleasure are balanced by an equal degree of pain or langour; 'tis like spending this year part of the next year's revenue.

When we desire or solicit any thing, our minds run wholly on the good side or circumstances of it; when it is obtained, our minds run wholly on the bad ones.

All panegyrics are mingled with an infusion of poppy.

Complaint is the largest tribute Heaven receives, and the sincerest part of our devotion.

The preaching of divines helps to preserve well-inclined men in the course of virtue, but seldom or never reclaims the vicious.

Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudices, eradicate virtue, honesty, and religion.