A cheerful temper, joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful, and wit good-natured.

We see no where the pernicious effects of luxury on a republic more than in that of the ancient Romans, who immediately found itself poor as soon as this vice got footing among them, though they were possessed of all the riches in the world.

Hope calculates its scenes for a long and durable life; presses forward to imaginary points of bliss; and grasps at impossibilities; and consequently very often ensnares men into beggary, ruin and dishonor.

Is there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stores of heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his greatness to his country's ruin!

Admiration is a very short lived passion that immediately decays upon growing familiar with its object, unless it still be fed with fresh discoveries, and kept alive by a new perpetual succession of miracles rising up to its view.

Contentment produces, in some measure, all those effects which the alchemist usually ascribes to what he calls the philosopher's stone; and if it does not bring riches, it does the same thing by banishing the desire for them.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.