Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

I have now lost my barrier between me and death; God grant I may live to be as well prepared for it, as I confidently believe her to have been! If the way to Heaven be through piety, truth, justice and charity, she is there.

This single Stick, which you now behold ingloriously lying in that neglected Corner, I once knew in a flourishing State in a Forest: It was full of Sap, full of Leaves, and full of Boughs: But now, in vain does the busy Art of Man pretend to vie with Nature, by tying that withered Bundle of Twigs to its sapless Trunk: It is at best but the Reverse of what it was; a Tree turned upside down, the Branches on the Earth, and the Root in the Air.

When a man is made a spiritual peer he loses his surname; when a temporal, his Christian name.

There never appear more than five or six men of genius in an age, but if they were united the world could not stand before them.

Old sciences are unraveled like old stockings, by beginning at the foot.

So geographers, in Africa maps, With savage pictures fill their gaps, And o'er uninhabitable downs Place elephants for want of towns