Excellence in any department can be attained only by the labor of a lifetime; it is not to be purchased at a lesser price.

That there is something in advice very useful and salutary, seems to be equally confessed on all hands; since even those that reject it, allow for the most part that rejection to be wrong, but charge the fault upon the unskilful manner in which it is given; they admit the efficacy of the medicine, but abhor the nauseousness of the vehicle.

A mere literary man is a dull man; a man who is solely a man of business is a selfish man; but when literature and commerce are united, they make a respectable man.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears.

High people, sir, are the best; take a hundred ladies of quality, you'll find them better wives, better mothers, more willing to sacrifice their own pleasures to their children, than a hundred other woman.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding, can expect only to improve a single science. In every other part of learning, they must be content to follow opinions, which they are not able to examine; and, even in that which they claim as peculiarly their own, can seldom add more than some small particle of knowledge, to the hereditary stock devolved to them from ancient times, the collective labour of a thousand intellects.

The dependant who cultivates delicacy in himself very little consults his own tranquillity.