When two friends part they should lock up one another's secrets, and interchange their keys.

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect change is the way to perfect them. It gets the name of wilfulness when it will not admit of a lawful change to the better. Therefore constancy without knowledge cannot be always good. In things ill it is not virtue, but an absolute vice.

A sentence well couched takes both the sense and understanding. I love not those cart-rope speeches that are longer than the memory of man can fathom.

Business is the salt of life, which not only gives a grateful smack to it, but dries up those crudities that would offend, preserves from putrefaction and drives off all those blowing flies that would corrupt it.

That man is but of the lower part of the world that is not brought up to business and affairs.

There is no one subsists by himself alone.

Virtue dwells at the head of a river, to which we cannot get but by rowing against the stream.