To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

A lexicographer, a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned... a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

To build is to be robbed.

God Himself, sir, does not propose to judge a man until his life is over. Why should you and I?

The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.