There is no temper more unpropitious to interest than desultory application and unlimited inquiry, by which the desires are held in a perpetual equipoise, and the mind fluctuates between different purposes without determination.

I have all my life long been lying in bed till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good.

Frugality may be termed the daughter of Prudence, the sister of Temperance, and the parent of Liberty.

The faults of a man loved or honoured sometimes steal secretly and imperceptibly upon the wise and virtuous, but by injudicious fondness or thoughtless vanity are adopted with design.

His scorn of the great is repeated too often to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.

Wit will never make a man rich, but there are places where riches will always make a wit.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.