I have often thought that there has rarely passed a life of which a judicious and faithful narrative would not be useful; for not only every man has, in the mighty mass of the world, great numbers in the same condition with himself, to whom his mistakes and miscarriages, escapes and expedients, would be of immediate and apparent use; but there is such a uniformity in the state of man, considered apart from adventitious and separable decorations and disguises, that there is scarce any possibility of good or ill but is common to human kind.

To hear complaints with patience, even when complaints are vain, is one of the duties of friendship.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.

It is not often that any man can have so much knowledge of another, as is necessary to make instruction useful.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

Hope is an amusement rather than a good, and adapted to none but very tranquil minds.