That kind of life is most happy which affords us most opportunities of gaining our own esteem.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

In traveling, a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

You never find people laboring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful income.

The parallel circumstances and kindred images to which we readily conform our minds are, above all other writings, to be found in the lives of particular persons, and therefore no species of writing seems more worthy of cultivation than biography.

Sir, I think all Christians, whether Papists or Protestants, agree in the essential articles, and that their differences are trivial, and rather political than religious.