Get together a hundred or two men, however sensible they may be, and you are very likely to have a mob.
Occupation alone is happiness.
Present opportunities are neglected, and attainable good is slighted, by minds busied in extensive ranges and intent upon future advantages.
Pleasure itself is not a vice.
A man guilty of poverty easily believes himself suspected.
None can be pleased without praise, and few can be praised without falsehood.
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
To paint things as they are requires a minute attention, and employs the memory rather than the fancy.
He that never labors may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasures.
To be of no Church is dangerous.
To tell your own secrets is generally folly, but that folly is without guilt; to communicate those with which we are intrusted is always treachery, and treachery for the most part combined with folly.
Everybody knows worse of himself than he knows of other men.
Slander is the revenge of a coward, and dissimulation of his defense.
The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow.
Want of tenderness is want of parts, and is no less a proof of stupidity than depravity.
Conjecture as to things useful, is good; but conjecture as to what it would be useless to know, is very idle.
Let observation with extensive view, Survey mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious toil, each eager strife, And watch the busy scenes of crowded life.
The best part of every author is in general to be found in his book, I assure you.
The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.
The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.