So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

If a man begins to read in the middle of a book, and feels an inclination to go on, let him not quit it to go to the beginning. He may perhaps not feel again the inclination.

To dread no eye and to suspect no tongue is the great prerogative of innocence--an exemption granted only to invariable virtue.

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.

So scanty is our present allowance of happiness that in many situations life could scarcely be supported if hope were not allowed to relieve the present hour by pleasures borrowed from the future.

Studious to please, yet not ashamed to fail.

Foppery is never cured; it is the bad stamina of the mind, which, like those of the body, are never rectified; once a coxcomb always a coxcomb.