Keep carefully not of all scrapes and quarrels. They lower a character extremely; and are particularly dangerous in France, wherea man is dishonoured by not resenting an affront, and utterly ruined by resenting it.

Next to doing things that deserve to be written, nothing gets a man more credit, or gives him more pleasure than to write things that deserve to be read.

The more one works, the more willing one is to work.

All I desire for my own burial, is not to be buried alive; but how or where, I think, must be entirely indifferent to every rational creature.

I am in the pitiable situation of feeling all the force of temptation without having the strength to succumb to it.

May you live as long as you are fit to live, but no longer, or, may you rather die before you cease to be fit to live than after!

The nation looked upon him as a deserter, and he shrunk into insignificancy and an earldom.