If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.

The proper education of poor children [is] the ground-work of almost every other kind of charity.... Without this foundation firstlaid, how much kindnessis unavoidably cast away?

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

The world is ashamed of being virtuous.

Upon the present theological computation, ten souls must be lost for one that is saved. At which rate of reckoning, heaven can raise but its cohorts while hell commands its legions. From which sad account it would appear, that, though our Saviour had conquered death by the resurrection, he had not yet been able to overcome sin by the redemption.

Almost one half of our time is spent in telling and hearing evil of one another ... and every hour brings forth something strange and terrible to fill up our discourse and our astonishment.

Tis no extravagant arithmetic to say, that for every ten jokes, thou hast got an hundred enemies; and till thou hast gone on, and raised a swarm of wasps about thine ears, and art half stung to death by them, thou wilt never be convinced it is so.