Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.

That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy.

In men desire begets love, and in women love begets desire.

You should never be ashamed to admit you have been wrong. It only proves you are wiser today than yesterday.

Two days after this adventure, the emperor, having ordered that part of his army which quarters in and about his metropolis, to be in readiness, took a fancy of diverting himself in a very singular manner. He desired I would stand like a Colossus, with my legs as far asunder as I conveniently could.

When I gave that free censure of the country and its inhabitants, he made no further answer than by telling me, that I had not been long enough among them to form a judgment; and that the different nations of the world had different customs;

It is in men as in soils where sometimes there is a vein of gold which the owner knows not.

Power is no blessing in itself, except when it is used to protect the innocent.

Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.

Caesar freely confessed to me, that the greatest actions of his own life were not equal, by many degrees, to the glory of taking it away.

It is the folly of too many to mistake the echo of a London coffee-house for the voice of the kingdom.

I heartily hate and detest that animal called man, although I heartily love John, Peter, Thomas, ans so forth.

When I am reading a book, whether wise or silly, it seems to me to be alive and talking to me.