Friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

Nothing is difficult, when gain and honour unite their influence.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

We love to overlook the boundaries which we do not wish to pass.

Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained: but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom.

The wickedness of a loose or profane author is more atrocious than that of a giddy libertine or drunken ravisher, not only because it extends its effects wider, as a pestilence that taints the air is more destructive than poison infused in a draught, but because it is committed with cool deliberation.