Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other's failings because they are his own.

About things on which the public thinks long it commonly attains to think right.

Presumption will be easily corrected; but timidity is a disease of the mind more obstinate and fatal.

A successful author is equally in danger of the diminution of his fame, whether he continues or ceases to write. The regard of the public is not to be kept but by tribute, and the remembrance of past service will quickly languish unless successive performances frequently revive it. Yet in every new attempt there is new hazard, and there are few who do not, at some unlucky time, injure their own characters by attempting to enlarge them.

There are people whom one should like very well to drop, but would not wish to be dropped by.

A family ... is a little kingdom, torn with factions and exposed to revolutions.

Liberty is, to the lowest rank of every nation, little more than the choice of working or starving.