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.

Contempt is frequently regulated by fashion.

When soured by disappointment we must endeavor to pursue some fixed and pleasing course of study, that there may be no blank leaf in our book of life. Painful and disagreeable ideas vanish from the mind that can fix its attention upon any subject.

Troops of furies march in the drunkard's triumph.

A moral lesson is better expressed in short sayings than in long discourse.

All our distinctions ire accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.

In the sallies of badinage a polite fool shines; but in gravity he is as awkward as an elephant disporting.