We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.
Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.
The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Courage is the greatest of all virtues, because if you haven’t courage, you may not have an opportunity to use any of the others.
Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.
Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen.
To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.
Actions are visible, though motives are secret.
A wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself; his aim is so exalted that riches, office, fortune and favour cannot satisfy him.
Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.
The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.
Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.
To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.
Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
Allow children to be happy in their own way, for what better way will they find?
I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.
A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but, one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.