Nothing of worth or weight can be achieved with half a mind, with a faint heart, and with a lame endeavor.
The reading of books, what is it but conversing with the wisest men of all ages and all countries.
Mathematics – the unshaken Foundation of Sciences, and the plentiful Fountain of Advantage to human affairs.
The fruits of the earth do not more obviously require labor and cultivation to prepare them for our use and subsistence, than our faculties demand instruction and regulation in order to qualify us to become upright and valuable members of society, useful to others, or happy ourselves.
Smiling always with a never fading serenity of countenance, and flourishing in an immortal youth.
Upright simplicity is the deepest wisdom, and perverse craft the merest shallowness.
That men should live honestly, quietly, and comfortably together, it is needful that they should live under a sense of God’s will, and in awe of the divine power, hoping to please God, and fearing to offend Him, by their behaviour respectively.
It is safe to make a choice of your thoughts, scarcely ever safe to express them all.
Wherefore for the public interest and benefit of human society it is requisite that the highest obligations possible should be laid upon the consciences of men.
That in affairs of very considerable importance men should deal with one another with satisfaction of mind, and mutual confidence, they must receive competent assurances concerning the integrity, fidelity, and constancy each of other.
No man speaketh, or should speak, of his prince, that which he hath not weighed whether it will consist with that veneration which should be preserved inviolate to him.
Let us consider that swearing is a sin of all others peculiarly clamorous, and provocative of Divine judgment.
Every ear is tickled with the sweet music of applause.
Facetiousness is allowable when it is the most proper instrument of exposing things apparently base and vile to due contempt.
Because men believe not in Providence, therefore they do so greedily scrape and hoard. They do not believe in any reward for charity, therefore they will part with nothing.
I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters.
Even private persons in due season, with discretion and temper, may reprove others, whom they observe to commit sin, or follow bad courses, out of charitable design, and with hope to reclaim them.