All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.

We may have uneasy feelings for seeing a creature in distress without pity; for we have not pity unless we wish to relieve them.

Whatever advantage we snatch beyond a certain portion allotted us by at nature, is like money spent before it is due, which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.

It seems not more reasonable to leave the right of printing unrestrained, because writers may be afterwards censured, than it would be to sleep with doors unbolted, because by our laws we can hang a thief.

Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness . . .

A man seldom thinks with more earnestness of anything than he does of his dinner.

The excellence of aphorisms consists not so much in the expression of some rare or abstruse sentiment, as in the comprehension of some useful truth in a few words.