The man who feels himself ignorant should, at least, be modest.
Peevishness may be considered the canker of life, that destroys its vigor and checks its improvement; that creeps on with hourly depredations, and taints and vitiates what it cannot consume.
Human reason borrowed many arts from the instinct of animals.
How gloomy would be the mansions of the dead to him who did not know that he should never die: that what now acts shall continue its agency, and what now thinks shall think on forever!
Our senses, our appetite, and our passions are our lawful and faithful guides in things that relate solely to this life.
Indolence is the devil’s cushion.
It is a maxim that no man was ever enslaved by influence while he was fit to be free.
To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence – an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.
Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.
Rags will always make their appearance where they have a right to do it.
To buried merit rise the tardy bust.
All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.
A man of sense and education should meet a suitable companion in a wife. It is a miserable thing when the conversation can only be such as whether the mutton should be boiled or roasted, and probably a dispute about that.
Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.
Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.
I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.
We consider ourselves as defective in memory, either because we remember less than we desire, or less than we suppose others to remember.
An epithet or metaphor drawn from nature ennobles art; an epithet or metaphor drawn from art degrades nature.
In sovereignty there are no gradations.
The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.