It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.

Arbitrary power is but the first natural step from anarchy, or the savage life.

If the men of wit and genius would resolve never to complain in their works of critics and detractors, the next age would not know that they ever had any.

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Dignity, high station, or great riches, are in some sort necessary to old men, in order to keep the younger at a distance, who are otherwise too apt to insult them upon the score of their age.

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

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.