We ask advice but we mean approbation.
Were we as eloquent as angels we still would please people much more by listening rather than talking.
The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society’s most basic values.
The worst thing that can be said of the most powerful is that they can take your life; but the same can be said of the most weak.
There can be no Christianity where there is no charity.
Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife, unless the one is about to be sold, the other to be buried.
For one man who sincerely pities our misfortunes, there are a thousand who sincerely hate our success.
Success seems to be that which forms the distinction between confidence and conceit.
Eloquence is the language of nature, and cannot be learned in the schools; but rhetoric is the creature of art, which he who feels least will most excel in.
There are some frauds so well conducted that it would be stupidity not to be deceived by them.
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.
Those who bequeath unto themselves a pompous funeral, are at just so much expense to inform the world of something that had much better be concealed; namely, that their vanity has survived themselves.
It is far more easy to acquire a fortune like a knave, than to expend it, like a gentleman.
Reply to wit with gravity, and to gravity with wit.
Physicians must discover the weaknesses of the human mind, and even condescend to humor them, or they will never be called in to cure the infirmities of the body.
In great cities men are more callous both to the happiness and the misery of others, than in the country; for they are constantly in the habit of seeing both extremes.
Deliberate with caution, but act with decision and yield with graciousness, or oppose with firmness.
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, and the first that dies.
To cure us of our immoderate love of gain, we should seriously consider how many goods there are that money will not purchase, and these the best; and how many evils there are that money will not remedy, and these the worst.
Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.