Actions are visible, though motives are secret.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

A thousand years may elapse before there shall appear another man with a power of versification equal to that of Pope.

No money is better spent than what is laid out for domestic satisfaction.

Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.

Whatever is proposed, it is much easier to find reasons for rejecting than embracing.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.