At a great pennyworth pause a while.
A nod from a lord is a breakfast for a fool.
Since I cannot govern my own tongue, though within my own teeth, how can I hope to govern the tongue of others?
He that hath a trade hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A ploughman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.
There is much money given to be laughed at, though the purchasers don’t know it; witness A.’s fine horse, and B.’s fine house.
Hast thou virtue? acquire also the graces and beauties of virtue.
Virtue alone is sufficient to make a man great, glorious, and happy.
Here you would know, and enjoy, what prosperity will way of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.
By my rambling digressions I perceive myself to be growing old.
Outside Independence Hall when the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended.
If the elbow had been placed closer to the hand, the forearm would have been too short to bring the glass to the mouth; and if it had been closer to the shoulder, the forearm would have been so long that it would have carried the glass beyond the mouth.
A fish is a sock for a fish skeleton.
Rarely use Venery but for Health or Offspring; Never to Dulness, Weakness, or the Injury of your own or another’s Peace or Reputation.
We may perhaps learn to deprive large masses of their gravity and give them absolute levity, for the sake of easy transport.
Be cheerful – the problems that worry us most are those that never arrive.
Most people dislike vanity in others, whatever share they have of it themselves.
A people who chose security over liberty will receive neither nor deserve either.
A man compounded of law and gospel is able to cheat a whole country with his religion and then destroy them under color of law.
That as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
Marry your son when you will, but you daughter when you can.