To tell of disappointment and misery, to thicken the darkness of futurity, and perplex the labyrinth of uncertainty, has been always a delicious employment of the poets

So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.

A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.

A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth.

Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself, might convey his notions to another, if, content to be understood, he did not seek to be admired; but when once he begins to contrive how his sentiments may be received, not with most ease to his reader, but with most advantage to himself, he then transfers his consideration from words to sounds, from sentences to periods, and, as he grows more elegant, becomes less intelligible.

Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.