Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

True happiness arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next, from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions.

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

''We are always doing,'' says he, ''something for posterity, but I would see posterity do something for us.''

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition; but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

'Tis not in mortals to command success, but we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it.

Admiration is a very short-lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it be still fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

Our disputants put me in mind of the cuttlefish that, when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens the water about him till he becomes invisible.