What should I have known or written had I been a quiet, mercantile politician or a lord in waiting? A man must travel, and turmoil, or there is no existence."

Letter writing is the only device for combining solitude with good company.

"Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction."

"To withdraw myself from myself has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive in scribbling at all."

Nothing can confound a wise man more than laughter from a dunce.