A writer who obtains his full purpose loses himself in his own lustre.

A man is not obliged honestly to answer a question which should not properly be put.

When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it; you will dry it away. Be always busy.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

There is no observation more frequently made by such as employ themselves in surveying the conduct of mankind, than that marriage, though the dictate of nature, and the institution of Providence, is yet very often the cause of misery, and that those who enter into that state can seldom forbear to express their repentance, and their envy of those whom either chance or caution hath withheld from it.

We often need reminding even if we do not often need educating.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.