What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Advice is offensive, it shows us that we are known to others as well as to ourselves.

Friendship may well deserve the sacrifice of pleasure, though not of conscience.

It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.

No man is defeated without some resentment which will be continued with obstinacy while he believes himself in the right, and asserted with bitterness, if even to his own conscience he is detected in the wrong.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.