It generally happens that assurance keeps an even pace with ability.

Most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness . . .

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.

To exact of every man who writes that he should say something new, would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile genius to say only what is new, would be to contract his volumes to a few pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition; libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.

To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.

Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.

A man who both spends and saves money is the happiest man, because he has both enjoyments.