You are much surer that you are doing good when you pay money to those who work, as the recompense of their labor, than when you give money merely in charity.

To be prejudiced is always to be weak; yet there are prejudices so near to laudable that they have been often praised and are always pardoned.

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

It is to be steadily inculcated, that virtue is the highest proof of understanding, and the only solid basis of greatness.

The majority of a society is the true definition of the public.

You cannot, by all the lecturing in the world, enable a man to make a shoe.

It is not indeed certain, that the most refined caution will find a proper time for bringing a man to the knowledge of his own failing, or the most zealous benevolence reconcile him to that judgment by which they are detected; but he who endeavours only the happiness of him whom he reproves will always have either the satisfaction of obtaining or deserving kindness; if he succeeds, he benefits his friend; and if he fails, he has at least the consciousness that he suffers for only doing well.