Unsociable humors are contracted in solitude, which will, in the end, not fail of corrupting the understanding as well as the manners, and of utterly disqualifying a man for the satisfactions and duties of life. Men must be taken as they are, and we neither make them or ourselves better by flying from or quarreling with them.

There is a time when the hoary head of inveterate abuse will neither draw reverence nor obtain protection.

Teach me, O lark! with thee to greatly rise, to exalt my soul and lift it to the skies.

Man is by his constitution a religious animal.

Evils we have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more grievous than any evils.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to anything but power for their relief.

Some degree of novelty must be one of the materials in almost every instrument which works upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself, more or less, with all our pleasures.