Fools with bookish knowledge art children with edged weapons; they hurt themselves, and put others in pain.

Indolent people, whatever taste they may have for society, seek eagerly for pleasure, and find nothing. They have an empty head and seared hearts.

The human mind, in proportion as it is deprived of external resources, sedulously labors to find within itself the means of happiness, learns to rely with confidence on its own exertions, and gains with greater certainty the power of being happy.

Time is never more misspent than while we declaim against the want of it; all our actions are then tinctured with peevishness. The yoke of life is certainly the least oppressive when we carry it with good-humor; and in the shades of rural retirement, when we have once acquired a resolution to pass our hours with economy, sorrowful lamentations on the subject of time misspent and business neglected never torture the mind.

That happy state of mind, so rarely possessed, in which we can say, "I have enough," is the highest attainment of philosophy.

The lust of dominion innovates so imperceptibly that we become complete despots before our wanton abuse of power is perceived; the tyranny first exercised in the nursery is exhibited in various shapes and degrees in every stage of our existence.

Those beings only are fit for solitude who are like nobody, and are liked by nobody.