All power of fancy over reason is a degree of madness.

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

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Long customs are not easily broken; he that attempts to change the course of his own life very often labors in vain; and how shall we do that for others, which we are seldom able to do for ourselves.

Few of those who fill the world with books, have any pretensions to the hope either of pleasing or instructing. They have often no other task than to lay two books before them, out of which they compile a third, without any new material of their own, and with very little application of judgment to those which former authors have supplied.

It is indeed certain, that whoever attempts any common topick, will find unexpected coincidences of his thoughts with those of other writers; nor can the nicest judgment always distinguish accidental similitude from artful imitation.

A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.