Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.

I love to consider an Infidel, whether distinguished by the title of deist, atheist, or free-thinker, by three different lights, in his solitude, his afflictions, and his last moments.... [In these situations such people show themselves] in solitude, incapable or rapture or elevation, ... in distress, [with] a halter or a pistol the only refuge [they] can fly to, ... [and liable to conversion] at the approach of death.

It is a very melancholy reflection that men are usually so weak that it is absolutely necessary for them to know sorrow and pain to be in their right senses.

Pride destroys all symmetry and grace, and affectation is a more terrible enemy to fine faces than the small-pox.

Pleasure seizes the whole man who addicts himself to it, and will not give him leisure for any good office in life which contradicts the gayety of the present hour.

That man never grows old who keeps a child in his heart

A fool is in himself the object of pity, until he is flattered.