Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree. We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

It is wonderful when a calculation is made, how little the mind is actually employed in the discharge of any profession.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

Too much vigor in the beginning of an undertaking often intercepts and prevents the steadiness and perseverance always necessary in the conduct of a complicated scheme.

Among the numerous requisites that must concur to complete an author, few are of more importance than an early entrance into the living world. The seed of knowledge may be planted in solitude, but must be cultivated in public. Argumentation may be taught in colleges, and theories formed in retirement; but the artifice of embellishment and the powers of attraction can be gained only by a general converse.

A man who is good enough to go to heaven is good enough to be a clergyman.

Men are most powerfully affected by those evils which themselves feel, or which appear before their own eyes.