"A pipe is a pocket philosopher, a truer one than Socrates, for it never asks questions. Socrates must have been very tiresome, when one thinks of it."
"Dinna ye meddle, Tam; it's niver no good a threshin' other folks' corn; ye allays gits the flail agin' i' yer own eye somehow."
"Epigrams are the salts of life; but they wither up the grasses of foolishness, and naturally the grasses hate to be sprinkled therewith."
"A man never is so honest as when he speaks well of himself. Men are always optimists when they look inward, and pessimists when they look round them."
"Nothing is so pleasant as to display your worldly wisdom in epigram and dissertation, but it is a trifle tedious to hear another person display theirs."
"When you talk yourself you think how witty, how original, how acute you are; but when another does so, you are very apt to think only, 'What a crib from Rochefoucauld!'"
"Boredom is the ill-natured pebble that always will get in the golden slipper of the pilgrim of pleasure."
"It makes all the difference in life whether hope is left or—left out!"
"A frog that dwelt in a ditch spat at a worm that bore a lamp.