Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal.

Club: An assembly of good fellows, meeting under certain conditions.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.

Ignorance cannot always be inferred from inaccuracy; knowledge is not always present.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.

There are minds so impatient of inferiority that their gratitude is a species of revenge, and they return benefits, not because recompense is a pleasure, but because obligation is a pain.