The whole world is put in motion by the wish for riches and the dread of poverty.

Bounty always receives part of its value from the manner in which it is bestowed.

Wasting a fortune is evaporation by a thousand imperceptible means.

My diseases are an asthma and a dropsy and, what is less curable, seventy-five.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.

By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigor to resolution.

Abuse is often of service. There is nothing so dangerous to an author as silence.