Everyone has a fair turn to be as great as he pleases.

What can be more honorable than to have courage enough to execute the commands of reason and conscience,--to maintain the dignity of our nature, and the station assigned us?

A man that loves to be peevish and paramount, and to play the sovereign at every turn, does but blast the blessings of life, and swagger away his own enjoyments; and not to enlarge upon not folly, not to mention the injustice of such a behavior, it is always the sign of a little, unbenevolent temper. It is disease and discredit all over, and there is no more greatness in it, than in the swelling of a dropsy.

Fortitude implies a firmness and strength of mind, that enables us to do and suffer as we ought. It rises upon an opposition, and, like a river, swells the higher for having its course stopped.

Confidence, as opposed, to modesty and distinguished from decent assurance, proceeds from self-opinion, and is occasioned by ignorance and flattery.

It is a difficult task to talk to the purpose, and to put life and perspicuity into our discourse.

Not that the moderns are born with more wit than their predecessors, but, finding the world better furnished at their coming into it, they have more leisure for new thoughts, more light to direct them, and more hints to work upon.