By writing, you learn to write.

Wine makes a man better pleased with himself. I do not say that it makes him more pleasing to others.

The love of retirement has in all ages adhered closely to those minds which have been most enlarged by knowledge, or elevated by genius. Those who enjoyed everything generally supposed to confer happiness have been forced to seek it in the shades of privacy.

When the desire of wealth is taking hold of the heart, let us look round and see how it operates upon than whose industry or fortune has obtained it. When we find them oppressed with their own abundance, luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease, impatient and querulous in themselves, and despised or hated by the rest of mankind, we shall soon be convinced that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied, there remains little to be sought with solicitude or desired with eagerness.

Silence propagates itself, and the longer talk has been suspended, the more difficult it is to find anything to say.

Faction seldom leaves a man honest, however it might find him.

On Sir Joshua Reynolds's observing that the real character of a man was found out by his amusements. Yes, Sir, no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.