Fine clothes are good only as they supply the want of other means of procuring respect.

What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.

Consultation and compliance can conduce little to the perfection of any literary performance; for whoever is so doubtful of his own abilities as to encourage the remarks of others, will find himself every day embarrassed with new difficulties, and will harass his mind, in vain, with the hopeless labour of uniting heterogeneous ideas, digesting independent hints, and collecting into one point the several rays of borrowed light, emitted often with contrary directions.

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away.

Of a thousand shavers, two do not shave so much alike as not to be distinguished.

The wise man applauds he who he thinks most virtuous; the rest of the world applauds the wealthy.

Prudence is an attitude that keeps life safe, but does not often make it happy.