Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship.
The good of our present state is merely comparative, and the evil which every man feels will be sufficient to disturb and harass him if he does not know how much he escapes.
What is good only because it pleases cannot be pronounced good till it has been found to please.
To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.
Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?
None are happy but by anticipation of change.
Nothing is more idle than to inquire after happiness, which nature has kindly placed within our reach.
So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.
Terrestrial happiness is of short duration. The brightness of the flame is wasting its fuel; the fragrant flower is passing away in its own odors.
We seldom require more to the happiness of the present hour than to surpass him that stands next before us.
Words are daughters of earth but ideas are sons of heaven.
I wish you would add an index rerum, that when the reader recollects any incident he may easily find it.
Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.
The seeds of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public.
Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.
Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.
If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is perhaps itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced.
Misfortunes should always be expected.
A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.
Money confounds subordination.