The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses.

Title and ancestry render a good man more illustrious, but an ill one more contemptible.

Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.

In the common run of mankind, for one that is wise and good you find ten of a contrary character.

A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.