What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity,….

Serendipity... You will understand it better by the derivation than by the definition. I once read a silly fairy tale, called 'The Three Princes of S….

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice..

Lord Bath used to say of women, who are apt to say that they will follow their own judgment, that they could not follow a worse guide..

Mystery is the wisdom of blockheads..

Had I children, my utmost endeavors would be to make them musicians..

[French] authors are more afraid of offending delicacy and rules, than ambitious of sublimity..

I shun authors, and would never have been one myself, if it obliged me to keep such bad company..

Justice is rather the activity of truth, than a virtue in itself. Truth tells us what is due to others, and justice renders that due. Injustice is ac….

Two large prominent eyes that rolled about to no purpose (for he was utterly short-sighted) a wide mouth, thick lips and inflated visage, gave him th….

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs and councils governed by foolish servants. I have known great ministers, dist….

Shakespeare, with an improved education and in a more enlightened age, might easily have attained the purity and correction of Racine; but nothing le….

René of Anjou [(1409-80)] painted a picture of his mistress's corpse as he found it eaten by worms on having it [her tomb] openedon his return from a….

It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totall….

Ponder, your comedies are woeful chaff: Write tragedies, when you would make us laugh..

I have sometimes seen women, who would have been sensible enough, if they would have been content not to be called women of sense--but by aiming at w….

Fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees..

Our [British] summers are often, though beautiful for verdure, so cold, that they are rather cold winters..

Nine-tenths of the people were created so you would want to be with the other tenth..

The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, tha….

Life is a farce, and should not end with a mourning scene..