The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.

Pride, ill nature, and want of sense, are the three great sources of ill manners.

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.

No man of honor, as the word is usually understood, did ever pretend that his honor obliged him to be chaste or temperate, to pay his creditors, to be useful to his country, to do good to mankind, to endeavor to be wise or learned, to regard his word, his promise, or his oath.

Great abilities, when employed as God directs, do but make the owners of them greater and more painful servants to their neighbors.

Orators inflame the people, whose anger is really but a short fit of madness.

Imaginary evils soon become real ones by indulging our reflections on them; as he who in a melancholy fancy sees something like a face on the wall or the wainscot can, by two or three touches with a lead pencil, make it look visible, and agreeing with what he fancied.