It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable.

It is however, reasonable, to have perfection in our eye; that we may always advance towards it, though we know it never can be reached.

Among other pleasing errors of young minds is the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries can spare from themselves, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines everyone that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy.

Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings; let us be therefore cautious of how we strip her.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

It may be laid down as a position which seldom deceives, that when a man cannot bear his own company, there is something wrong.