Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.

A man had rather have a hundred lies told of him than one truth which he does not wish should be told.

In proportion as our cares are employed upon the future, they are abstracted from the present, from the only time which we can call our own, and of which, if we neglect the apparent duties to make provision against visionary attacks, we shall certainly counteract our own purpose.

That observation which is called knowledge of the world will be found much more frequently to make men cunning than good.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.

There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.