Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.

'Tis Liberty that crowns Britannia's isle, and makes her barren rocks and her bleak mountains smile... 'Tis Britain's care to watch o'er Europe's fate, and hold in balance each contending state, To threaten bold presumptuous kings with war, and answer her afflicted neighbours' prayer... Soon as her fleets appear their terrors cease.

The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy hereafter.

Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

There is nothing which one regards so much with an eye of mirth and pity as innocence when it has in it a dash of folly.