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

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

Knowledge is, indeed, that which, next to virtue, truly and essentially raises one man above another.

Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.

A brother's sufferings claim a brother's pity.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.