The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.

Most minds are the slaves of external circumstances, and conform to any hand that undertakes to mould them.

I do not envy a clergyman's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman who makes it an easy life.

True enjoyments also keep people from vice.

Suspicion is most often useless pain.

A short letter to a distant friend is, in my opinion, an insult like that of a slight bow or cursory salutation - a proof of unwillingness to do much, even where there is a necessity of doing something.

Men go to sea, before they know the unhappiness of that way of life; and when they have come to know it, they cannot escape from it, because it is then too late to choose another profession; as indeed is generally the case with men, when they have once engaged in any particular way of life.