Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

It is generally agreed, that few men are made better by affluence or exaltation.

Happiness," said he, "must be something solid and permanent, without fear and without uncertainty.

As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil.

Man is a transitory being, and his designs must partake of the imperfections of their author. To confer duration is not always in our power. We must snatch the present moment, and employ it well, without too much solicitude for the future, and content ourselves with reflecting that our part is performed. He that waits for an opportunity to do much at once, may breathe out his life in idle wishes, and regret, in the last hour, his useless intentions and barren zeal.

Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.

No man sympathizes with the sorrows of vanity.