A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity.

Life is surely given us for higher purposes than to gather what our ancestors have wisely thrown away, and to learn what is of no value but because it has been forgotten.

...a common observation, that few are mended by imprisonment, and that he, whose crimes have made confinement necessary, seldom makes any other use of his enlargement, than to do, with greater cunning, what he did before with less.

Tomorrow is an old deceiver, and his cheat never grows stale.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Man's chief merit consists in resisting the impulses of his nature.