The first time I read an excellent book, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend. When I read a book over I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

The nakedness of the indigent world may be clothed from the trimmings of the vain.

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.

Good counsel rejected returns to enrich the givers bosom.

Is it that Nature, attentive to the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses of every pleasure, equips imag-ination in the spoil?

Whatever the skill of any country may be in the sciences, it is from its excellence in polite learning alone that it must expect a character from posterity.