There is scarcely any writer who has not celebrated the happiness of rural privacy, and delighted himself and his reader with the melody of birds, the whisper of groves, and the murmur of rivulets.

Admiration and love are like being intoxicated with champagne; judgment and friendship are like being enlivened.

Life is short. The sooner that a man begins to enjoy his wealth the better.

He that hopes to look back hereafter with satisfaction upon past years must learn to know the present value of single minutes, and endeavour to let no particle of time fall useless to the ground.

We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience. We have always protected the Americans; we may therefore subject them to government.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.