Endeavor, as much as you can, to keep company with people above you.... Do not mistake, when I say company above you, and think that I mean with regard to their birth; that is the least consideration; but I mean with regard to their merit, and the light in which the world considers them.

I look upon indolence as a sort of suicide; for the man is effectually destroyed, though the appetites of the brute may survive.

I wish... that you had as much pleasure in following my advice, as I have in giving it.

We are as often duped by diffidence as by confidence.

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.

Dispatch is the soul of business.

I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.