The purse of the patient often protracts his case.

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.

An everlasting tranquility is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.

When we meet with better fare than was expected, the disappointment is overlooked even by the unscrupulous. When we meet with worse than was expected, philosophers alone know how to make it better.

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.

The man whose bosom neither riches nor luxury nor grandeur can render happy may, with a book in his hand, forget all his torments under the friendly shade of every tree; and experience pleasures as infinite as they are varied, as pure as they are lasting, as lively as they are unfading, and as compatible with every public duty as they are contributory to private happiness.

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