To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

It ought to be the first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom; or that which is established because it is right, from that which is right only because it is established; that he may neither violate essential principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the attainment of beauties within his view, by a needless fear of breaking rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.

Good breeding consists in having no particular mark of any profession, but a general elegance of manners.

Distance either of time or place is sufficient to reconcile weak minds to wonderful relations.

Assertion is not argument; to contradict the statement of an opponent is not proof that you are correct.

Any of us would kill a cow rather than not have beef.

Where necessity ends, desire and curiosity begin; and no sooner are we supplied with everything nature can demand than we sit down to contrive artificial appetites.