If he does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.

Advice, as it always gives a temporary appearance of superiority, can never be very grateful, even when it is most necessary or most judicious; but, for the same reason, every one is eager to instruct his neighbors.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

Irresolution and mutability are often the faults of men whose views are wide, and whose imagination is vigorous and excursive.

It is in refinement and elegance that the civilized man differs from the savage.

Time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination.

Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future.