Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last.

Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsick qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasures.

Repentance, however difficult to be practiced, is, if it be explained without superstition, easily understood. Repentance is the relinquishment of any practice from the conviction that it has offended God.

All intellectual improvement arises from leisure.

When any calamity is suffered, the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Affectation is to be always distinguished from hypocrisy as being the art of counterfeiting those qualities, which we might with innocence and safety, be known to want. Hypocrisy is the necessary burden of villainy; affectation part of the chosen trappings of folly.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.