Public schools are the nurseries of all vice and immorality.

Though we may sometimes unintentionally bestow our beneficence on the unworthy, it does not take from the merit of the act. For charity doth not adopt the vices of its objects.

I describe not men, but manners; not an individual, but a species.

A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

However exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers, the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

There is not in the universe a more ridiculous, nor a more contemptible animal, than a proud clergyman.

It is an error common to many to take the character of mankind from the worst and basest amongst them; whereas, as an excellent writer has observed, nothing should be esteemed as characteristical, of a species but what is to be found amongst the best and the most perfect individuals of that species.