Courage is a quality so necessary for maintaining virtue, that it is always respected, even when it is associated with vice.
There is less flogging in our great schools than formerly-but then less is learned there; so what the boys get at one end they lose at the other.
Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; -from fear of its being abused.
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies.
Since every man is obliged to promote happiness and virtue, he should be careful not to mislead unwary minds, by appearing to set too high a value upon things by which no real excellence is conferred.
He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.
What we read with inclination makes a much stronger impression. If we read without inclination, half the mind is employed in fixing the attention; so there is but one half to be employed on what we read.
Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.
Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings.
All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.
Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
Philosophers there are who try to make themselves believe that this life is happy; but they believe it only while they are saying it, and never yet produced conviction in a single mind.
No man can enjoy happiness without thinking that he enjoys it.
Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.
Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, sickness and captivity would, without this comfort, be insupportable.
Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.
The triumph of hope over experience.
Whoever envies another confesses his superiority.
Knowledge always desires increase, it is like fire, which must first be kindled by some external agent, but which will afterwards propagate itself.
Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.