Few things are so liberally bestowed, or squandered with so little effect, as good advice.

Those who attain any excellence, commonly spend life in one pursuit; for excellence is not often gained upon easier terms.

Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.

In most ages many countries have had part of their inhabitants in a state of slavery; yet it may be doubted whether slavery can ever be supposed the natural condition of man. It is impossible not to conceive that men in their original state were equal; and very difficult to imagine how one would be subjected to another but by violent compulsion. An individual may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

The time will come to every human being when it must be known how well he can bear to die.

Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.