It seems to me that physical sickness softens, just as moral sickness hardens, the heart.

There is hardly anybody good for everything, and there is scarcely anybody who is absolutely good for nothing.

No man tastes pleasures truly, who does not earn them by previous business; and few people do business well, who do nothing else.

To have frequent recourse to narrative betrays great want of imagination.

As fathers commonly go, it is seldom a misfortune to be fatherless; and considering the general run of sons, as seldom a misfortune to be childless.

Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

Men will not believe because they will not broaden their minds.