It is better to live rich than to die rich.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Languages are the pedigree of nations.
Had I learned to fiddle I should have done nothing else.
Men only become friends by community of pleasures.
Claret is the liquor for boys port for men but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy.
To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach is the great art of life.
In a man's letters his soul lies naked.
For a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.
The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.
A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Every other author may aspire to praise the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach.
I have found men more kind than I expected and less just.
A fishing-rod was a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.
Round numbers are always false.
When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight it concentrates his mind wonderfully.
Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.
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.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.