The most ignorant are the boldest conjecturers.

Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds.

Letters should be easy and natural, and convey to the persons to whom we send them just what we should say to the persons if we were with them.

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

To take a wife merely as an agreeable and rational companion, will commonly be found to be a grand mistake.

Dispatch is the soul of business.

The heart never grows better by age; I fear rather worse, always harder. A young liar will be an old one, and a young knave will only be a greater knave as he grows older.