A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

Almost all the moral good which is left among us is the apparent effect of physical evil.

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

As any action or posture, long continued, will distort and disfigure the limbs, so the mind likewise is crippled and contracted by perpetual application to the same set of ideas.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

A man is very apt to complain of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him.