What man in his right senses, that has wherewithal to live free, would make himself a slave for superfluities? What does that man want who has enough? Or what is he the better for abundance that can never be satisfied.

Pretences go a great way with men that take fair words and magisterial looks for current payment.

It is not the place, nor the condition, but the mind alone what it compares its situation to that can make anyone happy or miserable. Compare it to something better - result envy, frustration and sadness. Compare it to something worse - relief, gratitude and happiness.

The common people do not judge of vice or virtue by morality or immorality, so much as by the stamp that is set upon it by men of figure.

Unruly ambition is deaf, not only to the advice of friends, but to the counsels and monitions of reason itself.

Men talk as if they believed in God, but they live as if they thought there was none; their vows and promises are no more than words, of course.

The fairest blossoms of pleasantry thrive best where the sun is not strong enough to scorch, nor the soil rank enough to corrupt.