Persons in great stations have seldom their true character drawn till several years after their death. Their personal friendships and enmities must cease, and the parties they were engaged in be at an end, before their faults or their virtues can have justice done them. When writers have the least opportunities of knowing the truth, they are in the best disposition to tell it.

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.

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend.

Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.

There are no more useful members in a commonwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of Nature, find work for the poor, and wealth to the rich, and magnificence to the great.

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

The moral perfections of the Deity, the more attentively, we consider, the more perfectly still shall we know them.