Friendship is seldom lasting but between equals, or where the superiority on one side is reduced by some equivalent advantage on the other.

The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

It is our first duty to serve society.

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.

Even those to whom Providence has allotted greater strength of understanding can expect only to improve a single science.

In the bottle discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence.

Diffidence may check resolution and obstruct performance, but compensates its embarrassments by more important advantages; it conciliates the proud, and softens the severe; averts envy from excellence, and censure from miscarriage.