One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Complaisance, though in itself it be scarce reckoned in the number of moral virtues, is that which gives a lustre to every talent a man can be possessed of. It was Plato's advice to an unpolished writer that he should sacrifice to the graces. In the same manner I would advise every man of learning, who would not appear in the world a mere scholar or philosopher, to make himself master of the social virtue which I have here mentioned.

That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?

A source of cheerfulness to a good mind is the consideration of that Being on whom we have our dependence, and in whom, though we behold Him as yet but in the first faint discoveries of His perfections, we see everything that we can imagine as great glorious, or amiable. We find ourselves everywhere upheld by His goodness and surrounded by an immensity of love and mercy.

Ridicule is generally made use of to laugh men out of virtue and good sense, by attacking everything praiseworthy in human life.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

There is not so variable a thing in nature as a lady's head-dress.