When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it; you will dry it away. Be always busy.

Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.

Everything that enlarges the sphere of human powers, that shows man he can do what he thought he could not do, is valuable.

Sir, he [Bolingbroke] was a scoundrel and a coward: a scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion and morality; a coward, because he had not resolution to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beggarly Scotsman to draw the trigger at his death.

Mutual complacency is the atmosphere of conjugal love.

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

No man should attempt to teach others what he has never learned himself