Nature is indeed a specious ward, nay, there is a great deal in it if it is properly understood and applied, but I cannot bear to hear people using it to justify what common sense must disavow. Is not Nature modifed by art in many things? Was it not designed to be so? And is it not happy for human society that it is so? Would you like to see your husband let his beard grow, until he would be obliged to put the end of it in his pocket, because this beard is the gift of Nature?

Men are vile inconstant toads.

As marriage produces children, so children produce care and disputes; and wrangling.

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.

Conscience is justice's best minister; it threatens, promises, rewards, and punishes and keeps all under control; the busy must attend to its remonstrances, the most powerful submit to its reproof, and the angry endure its upbraidings. While conscience is our friend all is peace; but if once offended farewell the tranquil mind.

'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.

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