Books have always a secret influence on the understanding.

Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen.

A soldier's time is passed in distress and danger, or in idleness and corruption.

Where there is emulation, there will be vanity; where there is vanity, there will be folly.

To neglect at any time preparation for death is to sleep on our post at a siege; to omit it in old age is to sleep at an attack.

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, - attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.