A book should teach us to enjoy life, or to endure it.

There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.

The misery of man proceeds not from any single crush of overwhelming evil, but from small vexations continually repeated.

There are indeed, in the present corruption of mankind, many incitements to forsake truth: the need of palliating our own faults and the convenience of imposing on the ignorance or credulity of others so frequently occur; so many immediate evils are

Trust as little as you can to report, and examine all you can by your own senses.

Solitude is dangerous to reason, without being favourable to virtue. Remember that the solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.