Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality.

Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to the folly.

I have adopted the Roman sentiment, that it is more honorable to save a citizen than to kill an enemy.

The triumph of hope over experience.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing - it only hastens fools to rush in where angels fear to tread.

There is something in obstinacy which differs from every other passion. Whenever it fails, it never recovers, but either breaks like iron, or crumbles sulkily away, like a fractured arch. Most other passions have their periods of fatigue and rest, their sufferings and their cure; but obstinacy has no resource, and the first wound is mortal.