..to write and to live are very different. Many who praise virtue, do no more than praise it.

There lurks, perhaps, in every human heart a desire of distinction, which inclines every man first to hope, and then to believe, that Nature has given him something peculiar to himself.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.

Many useful and valuable books lie buried in shops and libraries, unknown and unexamined, unless some lucky compiler opens them by chance, and finds an easy spoil of wit and learning.

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

No, Sir, you will have much more influence by giving or lending money where it is wanted, than by hospitality.

To love their country has been considered as virtue in men, whose love could not be otherwise than blind, because their preference was made without, a comparison; but it has never been my fortune to find, either in ancient or modern writers, any honourable mention of those, who have, with equal blindness, hated their country.