If men of eminence are exposed to censure on one hand, they are as much liable to flattery on the other. If they receive reproaches which are not due to them, they likewise receive praises which they do not deserve.

Learning, like traveling and all other methods of improvement, as it finishes good sense, so it makes a silly man ten thousand times more insufferable by supplying variety of matter to his impertinence, and giving him an opportunity of abounding in absurdities.

A friend exaggerates a man's virtues; an enemy inflames his crimes.

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world; and if in the present life his happiness arises from the subduing of his desires, it will arise in the next from the gratification of them.

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

All of heaven we have below.