Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.

At length weariness succeeds to labor, and the mind lies at ease in the contemplation of her own attainments without any desire of new conquests or excursions. This is the age of recollection and narrative; the opinions are settled, and the avenues of apprehension shut against any new intelligence; the days that are to follow must pass in the inculcation of precepts already collected, and assertion of tenets already received; nothing is henceforward so odious as opposition, so insolent as doubt, or so dangerous as novelty.

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances.

There may be community of material possessions, but there can never be community of love or esteem.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.