If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?

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

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.

A cheerful, easy, open countenance will make fools think you a good-natured man, and make designing men think you an undesigning one.

The only sure way of avoiding these evils [vanity and boasting] is never to speak of yourself at all. But when, historically, youare obliged to mention yourself, take care not to drop one single word that can directly or indirectly be construed as fishing for applause.

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

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.