Admiration is a very short-lived passion, that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object.
Let freedom never perish in your hands.
Without constancy there is neither love, friendship, nor virtue in the world.
There is no virtue so truly great and godlike as justice.
I consider an human soul without education like marble in the quarry, which shows none of its inherent beauties till the skill of the polisher fetches out the colours, makes the surface shine, and discovers every ornamental cloud, spot and vein that runs through the body of it.
Exercise ferments the humors, casts them into their proper channels, throws off redundancies, and helps nature in those secret distributions, without which the body cannot subsist in its vigor, nor the soul act with cheerfulness.
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty Is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.
One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.
One of the most important but one of the most difficult things for a powerful mind is to be its own master.
We find the Works of Nature still more pleasant, the more they resemble those of art.
Talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
What an absurd thing it is to pass over all the valuable parts of a man, and fix our attention on his infirmities.
If men would consider not so much wherein they differ, as wherein they agree, there would be far less of uncharitableness and angry feeling in the world.
Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
Content thyself to be obscurely good. When vice prevails, and impious men bear sway, the post of honoris a private station.
Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.
The voice of reason is more to be regarded than the bent of any present inclination; since inclination will at length come over to reason, though we can never force reason to comply with inclination.
Quick sensitivity is inseperable from a ready understanding.