In our corrupted state, common weaknesses and defects contribute more towards the reconciling us to one another than all the precepts of the philosophers and divines.

Power is so apt to be insolent and Liberty to be saucy, that they are seldom upon good Terms.

A man that should call everything by its right name would hardly pass the streets without being knocked down as a common enemy.

Formality is sufficiently revenged upon the world for being so unreasonably laughed at; it is destroyed, it is true, but it hath the spiteful satisfaction of seeing everything destroyed with it.

A person may dwell so long upon a thought that it may take him a prisoner.

A man that steps aside from the world and has leisure to observe it without interest and design, thinks all mankind as mad as they think him.

Gratitude is one of those things that cannot be bought.