Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.

Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should always be deluded, for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations, however frequent, are yet less dreadful than its extinction.

To excite opposition and inflame malevolence is the unhappy privilege of courage made arrogant by consciousness of strength.

I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.

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.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.