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?

That of all the several ways of beginning a book which are now in practice throughout the known world, I am confident my own way of doing it is the bst-- I'm sure it is the most religious-- for I begin with writing the first sentence-- and trusting to Almighty God for the second.

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

My father, whose way was to force every event in nature into an hypothesis, by which means never man crucified TRUTH at the rate he did.

Chance is the providence of adventurers.

There are some tempers--how shall I describe them--formed either of such impenetrable matter, or wrought up by habitual selfishness to such an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature, or had no lot or connection at all with the species.

People who drink too much, health, and greedy. Hoard a treasure we do not like.