Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.

To my great-grandfather I owed the advice to dispense with the education of the schools and have good masters at home instead - and to realize that no expense should be grudged for this purpose.

As for others whose lives are not so ordered, he reminds himself constantly of the characters they exhibit daily and nightly at home and abroad, and of the sort of society they frequent; and the approval of such men, who do not even stand well in their own eyes, has no value for him.

The best sort of revenue is not to be like him who did the injury.

A man should remove not only unnecessary acts, but also unnecessary thoughts, for then superfluous activity will not follow.

Without a purpose, nothing should be done.

If unwilling to rise in the morning, say to thyself, 'I awake to do the work of a man.'