Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

There is no book so poor that it would not be a prodigy if wholly made by a single man.

Exercise cannot secure us from that dissolution to which we are decreed; but while the soul and body continue united, it can make the association pleasing, and give probable hopes that they shall be disciplined by an easy separation...to die is the fate of man; but to die with lingering anguish is generally his folly.

Censure is willingly indulged, because it always implies some superiority: men please themselves with imagining that they have made a deeper search, or wider survey than others, and detected faults and follies which escape vulgar observation.

Life, however short, is made still shorter by waste of time.

A few men are sufficient to broach falsehoods, which are afterwards innocently diffused by successive relaters.

No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.