-
If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.
-
Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.
-
He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.
-
Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
-
Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!
-
Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week.
-
The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.
-
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
-
Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!
-
Courage that grows from constitution often forsakes a man when he has occasion for it; courage which arises from a sense of duty acts; in a uniform manner.
-
A just and reasonable modesty does not only recommend eloquence, but sets off every great talent which a man can be possessed of.
-
There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.
-
An ostentatious man will rather relate a blunder or an absurdity he has committed, than be debarred from talking of his own dear person.
-
Those Marriages generally abound most with Love and Constancy, that are preceded by a long Courtship.
-
Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.
-
Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
-
Mere bashfulness without merit is awkwardness.
-
The woman that deliberates is lost.
-
Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.
-
Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below.
-
Their is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
-
The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
-
Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.
-
The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.