Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments; any enlargement of wishes is therefore equally destructive to happiness with the diminution of possession, and he that teaches another to long for what he never shall obtain is no less an enemy to his quiet than if he had robbed him of part of his patrimony

Scarce any man becomes eminently disagreeable but by a departure from his real character, and an attempt at something for which nature or education has left him unqualified.

I have always considered a clergyman as the father of a larger family than he is able to maintain.

He that pursues fame with just claims, trusts his happiness to the winds; but he that endeavors after it by false merit, has to fear, not only the violence of the storm, but the leaks of his vessel.

We are not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of avarice.

An Englishman is content to say nothing when he has nothing to say.

The next best thing to knowing something is knowing where to find it.