Poverty is often concealed in splendor, and often in extravagance. It is the task of many people to conceal their neediness from others. Consequently they support themselves by temporary means, and everyday is lost in contriving for tomorrow.

No writer can be fully convicted of imitation except there is a concurrence of more resemblance than can be imagined to have happened by chance; as where the same ideas are conjoined without any natural series or necessary coherence, or where not only the thought but the words are copied.

Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it.

Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

Cowardice encroaches fast upon such as spend their lives in company of persons higher than themselves.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

Every human being whose mind is not debauched, will be willing to give all that he has to get knowledge.