Shall we be destined to the days of eternity, on holy-days, as well as working-days, to be showing the relics of learning, as monks do the relics of their saints - without working one - one single miracle with them?

The more tickets you have in a lottery, the worse your chance. And it is the same of virtues, in the lottery of life.

How many thousands of [lives] are there every year that comes cast away, (in all civilized countries at least)--and consider'd asnothing but common air, in competition of an hypothesis.

I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?

I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life.

Some people pass through life soberly and religiously enough, without knowing way, or reasoning about it, but, from force of habit merely, go to heaven like fools.

Of all duties, prayer certainly is the sweetest and most easy.