Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

What provokes your risibility, Sir? Have I said anything that you understand? Then I ask pardon of the rest of the company.

When any fit of gloominess, or perversion of mind, lays hold upon you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaints, but exert your whole care to hide it; by endeavouring to hide it; you will dry it away. Be always busy.

It is, however, not necessary, that a man should forbear to write, till he has discovered some truth unknown before; he may be sufficiently useful, by only diversifying the surface of knowledge, and luring the mind by a new appearance to a second view of those beauties which it had passed over inattentively before.

Bashfulness may sometimes exclude pleasure, but seldom opens any avenue to sorrow or remorse.

The mere power of saving what is already in our hands must be of easy acquisition to every mind; and as the example of Lord Bacon may show that the highest intellect cannot safely neglect it, a thousand instances every day prove that the humblest may practise it with success.

If the man who turnips cries, Cry not when his father dies, 'Tis proof that he had rather Have a turnip than his father.