If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.

Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

I believe it will be found that those who marry late are best pleased with their children; and those who marry early, with their partners.

Nothing is more common than mutual dislike, where mutual approbation is particularly expected.

Many of our miseries are merely comparative: we are often made unhappy, not by the presence of any real evil, but by the absence of some fictitious good; of something which is not required by any real want of nature, which has not in itself any power of gratification, and which neither reason nor fancy would have prompted us to wish, did we not see it in the possession of others.

For who is pleased with himself.

A man finds in the productions of nature an inexhaustible stock of material on which he can employ himself, without any temptations to envy or malevolence, and has always a certain prospect of discovering new reasons for adoring the sovereign author of the universe.