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

There are many more shining qualities in the mind of man, but there is none so useful as discretion.

Peaceable times are the best to live in, though not so proper to furnish materials for a writer.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

I have always preferred cheerfulness to mirth. The latter I consider as an act, the former as a habit of mind. Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent.

Love is a second life; it grows into the soul, warms every vein, and beats in every pulse.

True religion and virtue give a cheerful and happy turn to the mind, admit of all true pleasures, and even procure for us the highest.