Nature has made us a present of a broad capacity for entertaining ourselves apart, and often calls us to do so, to teach us that we owe ourselves in part to society, but in the best part to ourselves.

It is not necessity but abundance which produces greed.

The relish of good and evil depends in a great measure upon the opinion we have of them.

I conceive that pleasures are to be avoided if greater pains be the consequence, and pains to be coveted that will terminate in greater pleasures.

But as Nature is the best guide, teaching must be the development of natural inclinations, for which purpose the teacher must watch his pupil and listen to him, not continually bawl words into his ears as if pouring water into a funnel. Good teaching will come from a mind well made rather than well filled.

I find no quality so easy for a man to counterfeit as devotion, though his life and manner are not conformable to it; the essence of it is abstruse and occult, but the appearances easy and showy.

There is some shadow of delight and delicacy which smiles upon and flatters us even in the very lap of melancholy.