In all evils which admit a remedy, impatience is to be avoided, because it wastes that time and attention in complaints, that, if properly applied might remove the cause.

The great source of pleasure is variety.

Let us be quick to repent of injuries while repentance may not be a barren anguish.

Lawful and settled authority is very seldom resisted when it is well employed.

No man can perform so little as not to have reason to congratulate himself on his merits, when he beholds the multitude that live in total idleness, and have never yet endeavoured to be useful.

Words too familiar, or too remote, defeat the purpose of a poet. From those sounds which we hear on small or on coarse occasions, we do not easily receive strong impressions, or delightful images; and words to which we are nearly strangers, whenever they occur, draw that attention on themselves which they should transmit to other things.

To those who have lived long together, everything heard and everything seen recalls some pleasure communicated, some benefit conferred, some petty quarrel or some slight endearment. Esteem of great powers, or amiable qualities newly discovered may embroider a day or a week, but a friendship of twenty years is interwoven with the texture of life.