As I approach a second childhood, I endeavor to enter into the pleasures of it.

Copiousness of words, however ranged, is always false eloquence, though it will ever impose on some sort of understandings.

people never write calmly but when they write indifferently.

'Tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one's power to do good, riches being another word for power.

I have all my life been on my guard against the information conveyed by the sense of hearing -- it being one of my earliest observations, the universal inclination of humankind is to be led by the ears, and I am sometimes apt to imagine that they are given to men as they are to pitchers, purposely that they may be carried about by them.

I don't say 'Tis impossible for an impudent man not to rise in the world, but a moderate merit with a large share of impudence is more probable to be advanced than the greatest qualifications without it.

We should ask, not who is the most learned, but who is the best learned.