Patience alleviates, as impatience augments, pain; thus persons of strong will suffer less than those who give way to irritation.

The common fluency of speech in many men, and most women, is owing to a scarcity of matter and a scarcity of words; for whosoever is a master of language, and hath a mind full of ideas, will be apt, in speaking, to hesitate upon the choice of both.

Flattery is the worst and falsest way of showing our esteem.

There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.

Whatever the poets pretend, it is plain they give immortality to none but themselves; it is Homer and Virgil we reverence and admire, not Achilles or Aeneas. With historians it is quite the contrary; our thoughts are taken up with the actions, persons, and events we read, and we little regard the authors.

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

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.