There are three classes of men; the retrograde, the stationary and the progressive.

True philosophy is that which renders us to ourselves, and all others who surround us, better, and at the same time more content, more patient, more calm and more ready for all decent and pure enjoyment.

Habit is altogether too arbitrary a master for me to submit to.

He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.

Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet.

Avoid connecting yourself with characters whose good and bad sides are unmixed and have not fermented together; they resemble vials of vinegar and oil; or palletts set with colors; they are either excellent at home and insufferable abroad, or intolerable within doors and excellent in public; they are unfit for friendship, merely because their stamina, their ingredients of character are too single, too much apart; let them be finely ground up with each other, and they are incomparable.

The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.