It seems to be remarkable that death increases our veneration for the good, and extenuates our hatred for the bad.

He who would have fine guests, let him have a fine wife.

The business of the biographer is often to pass slightly over those performances and incidents which produce vulgar greatness, to lead the thoughts into domestic privacies, and display the minute details of daily life, were exterior appendages are cast aside, and men excel each other only by prudence and virtue.

The cure for the greatest part of human miseries is not radical, but palliative.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.