Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.

Cautious age suspects the flattering form, and only credits what experience tells.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it.

The applause of a single human being is of great consequence.

An Italian philosopher said that "time was his estate"; an estate indeed which will produce nothing without cultivation, but will always abundantly repay the labors of industry, and generally satisfy the most extensive desires, if no part of it be suffered to lie in waste by negligence, to be overrun with noxious plants, or laid out for show rather than for use.

A decent provision for the poor is the true test of civilization.