There is a frightful interval between the seed and the timber.

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

Such is the state of every age, every sex, and every condition: all have their cares, either from nature or from folly; and whoever, therefore, finds himself inclined to envy another, should remember that he knows not the real condition which he desires to obtain, but is certain that by indulging a vicious passion, he must lessen that happiness which he thinks already too sparingly bestowed.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of something that, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion.

In Shakespeare's plays, the mourner hastening to bury his friend is all the time colliding with the reveller hastening to his wine.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

The prospect of penury in age is so gloomy and terrifying that every man who looks before him must resolve to avoid it; and it must be avoided generally by the science of sparing.