The generality of men expend the early part of their lives in contributing to render the latter part miserable.

A coxcomb is the blockhead's man of merit.

There is as much trickery required to grow rich by a stupid book as there is folly in buying it.

The same vices which are huge and insupportable in others we do not feel in ourselves.

The sublime only paints the true, and that too in noble objects; it paints it in all its phases, its cause and its effect; it is the most worthy expression or image of this truth. Ordinary minds cannot find out the exact expression, and use synonymes.

Great things astonish us, and small dishearten us. Custom makes both familiar.

A man is thirty years old before he has any settled thoughts of his fortune; it is not completed before fifty. He falls to building in his old age, and dies by the time his house is in a condition to be painted and glazed.