New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

It is practice alone that brings the powers of the mind, as well as those of the body, to their perfection.

In the discharge of thy place set before thee the best examples; for imitation is a globe of precepts.

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

That which is static and repetitive is boring. That which is dynamic and random is confusing. In between lies art.

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

Certainly great persons had need to borrow other men's opinions to think themselves happy; for if they judge by their own feeling, they cannot find it: but if they think with themselves what other men think of them, and that other men would fain be as they are, then they are happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, they find the contrary within.