Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not - silence is the sharper sword.

Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place.

Men who cannot deceive others are very often successful at deceiving themselves.

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

Waste cannot be accurately told, though we are sensible how destructive it is. Economy, on the one hand, by which a certain income is made to maintain a man genteelly; and waste, on the other, by which on the same income another man lives shabbily, cannot be defined. It is a very nice thing; as one man wears his coat out much sooner than another, we cannot tell how.

There may be other reasons for a man's not speaking in publick than want of resolution: he may have nothing to say.