The lives of great men cannot be writ with any tolerable degree of elegance or exactness within a short time after their decease.

A good conscience is to the soul what health is to the body; it preserves constant ease and serenity within us; and more than countervails all the calamities and afflictions which can befall us from without.

Gold is a wonderful clearer of the understanding; it dissipates every doubt and scruple in an instant.

I believe that everyone, some time or other, dreams that he is reading papers, books, or letters; in which case the invention prompts so readily that the mind is imposed upon, and mistakes its own suggestions for the composition of another.

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Good nature is more agreeable in conversation than wit and gives a certain air to the countenance which is more amiable than beauty.

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.