Many have been ruined by their fortunes, and many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it the great have become little, and the little great.

Economy is an excellent lure to betray people into expense.

Family pride entertains many unsocial opinions.

Do not think that your Learning and Genius, your Wit or Sprightliness, are welcome everywhere. I was once told that my Company was disagreeable because I appeared so uncommonly happy.

Never suffer the prejudice of the eye to determine the heart.

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 love of solitude, when cultivated in the morn of life, elevates the mind to a noble independence, but to acquire the advantages which solitude is capable of affording, the mind must not be impelled to it by melancholy and discontent, but by a real distaste to the idle pleasures of the world, a rational contempt for the deceitful joys of life, and just apprehensions of being corrupted and seduced by its insinuating and destructive gayeties.