... one should know the value of Life better than to pout any part of it away.

'Tis never for their wisdom that one loves the wisest, or for their wit that one loves the wittiest; 'tis for benevolence, and virtue, and honest fondness, one loves people...

We look on those approaching the banks of a river all must cross, with ten times the interest they excited when dancing in the meadow.

No companion however wise, no friend however useful, can be to me what my mother has been: her image will long pursue my fancy; her voice for ever hang in my ears: may her precepts but sink into my heart!

If truth can be found in any sublunary science, numbers will produce it, for to that at last almost all other sciences refer for confirmation.

Friendship is far more delicate than love. Quarrels and fretful complaints are attractive in the last, offensive in the first. And the very things which heap fewel on the fire of ardent passion, choke and extinguish sober and true regard. On the other hand, time, which is sure to destroy that love of which half certainly depends on desire, is as sure to increase a friendship founded on talents, warm with esteem, and ambitious of success for the object of it.

What signifies, says some one, giving halfpence to beggars? they only lay it out in gin or tobacco. "And why should they be denied such sweeteners of their existence (says Johnson)? it is surely very savage to refuse them every possible avenue to pleasure, reckoned too coarse for our own acceptance. Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.