There are in every age new errors to be rectified and new prejudices to be opposed.
No man will be found in whose mind airy notions do not sometimes tyrannize, and force him to hope or fear beyond the limits of sober probability.
No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.
A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.
Do not accustom yourself to consider debt only as an inconvenience; you will find it a calamity.
The law is the last result of human wisdom acting upon human experience for the benefit of the public.
The true art of memory is the art of attention.
He that would be superior to external influences must first become superior to his own passions.
There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.
Our aspirations are our possibilities.
Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.
The vicious count their years; virtuous, their acts.
It is the just doom of laziness and gluttony to be inactive without ease and drowsy without tranquility.
Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. Those that walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass in seven years a space equal to the circumference of the globe.
The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence.
Nature never gives everything at once.
Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.
It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends.
Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good. It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil.
A man who uses a great many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who, instead of aiming a single stone at an object, takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may hit.