Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, toil, envy, want, and patron.

There are occasions on which all apology is rudeness.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

Age looks with anger on the temerity of youth, and youth with contempt on the scrupulosity of age.

It is surely very narrow policy that supposes money to be the chief good.