What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.

It is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion, and he whose real wants are supplied must admit those of fancy.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others... This is one of the disadvantages of wine, it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

Wine gives a man nothing. It neither gives him knowledge nor wit; it only animates a man, and enables him to bring out what a dread of the company has repressed. It only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.