Little would be wanting to the happiness of life, if every man could conform to the right as soon as he was shown it.

Among the calamities of war may be numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in the arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

They whose activity of imagination is often shifting the scenes of expectation, are frequently subject to such sallies of caprice as make all their actions fortuitous, destroy the value of their friendship, obstruct the efficacy of their virtues, and set them below the meanest of those who persist in their resolutions, execute what they design, and perform what they have promised.

Melancholy, indeed, should be diverted by every means but drinking.