They who look but little into futurity, have, perhaps, the quickest sensation of the present.

Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life.

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

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement; as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared, and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon another.

It is as bad as bad can be: it is ill-fed, ill-killed, ill-kept, and ill-drest.

Among many parallels which men of imagination have drawn between the natural and moral state of the world, it has been observed that happiness as well as virtue consists in mediocrity.

When any calamity is suffered, the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.