All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to show how much he can spare.

Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

Piety is the only proper and adequate relief of decaying man. He that grows old without religions hopes, as he declines into imbecility, and feels pains and sorrows incessantly crowding upon him, falls into a gulf of bottomless misery, in which every reflection must plunge him deeper and deeper.

Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.