It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together.

The equity of Providence has balanced peculiar sufferings with peculiar enjoyments.

The business of a poet is to examine not the individual but the species; to remark general properties and large appearances.

That distrust which intrudes so often on your mind is a mode of melancholy, which, if it be the business of a wise man to be happy, it is foolish to indulge; and if it be a duty to preserve our faculties entire for their proper use, it is criminal. Suspicion is very often an useless pain.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.

Who drives fat oxen should himself be fat.