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

He that voluntarily continues in ignorance, is guilty of all the crimes which ignorance produces.

Wise married women don't trouble themselves about infidelity in their husbands.

This is my history; like all other histories, a narrative of misery.

Language is the dress of thought.

We are unreasonably desirous to separate the goods of life from those evils which Providence has connected with them, and to catch advantages without paying the price at which they are offered to us. Every man wishes to be rich, but very few have the powers necessary to raise a sudden fortune, either by new discoveries, or by superiority of skill in any necessary employment; and among lower understandings many want the firmness and industry requisite to regular gain and gradual acquisitions.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.