The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

In such a government as ours no man is appointed to an office because he is the fittest for it--nor hardly in any other government--because there are so many connections and dependencies to be studied.

[C]ourage is reckoned the greatest of all virtues; because, unless a man has that virtue, he has no security for preserving any other.

There is no kind of idleness by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business.

The roads of science are narrow, so that they who travel them, must wither follow or meet one another.

Books to judicious compilers, are useful; to particular arts and professions, they are absolutely necessary; to men of real science, they are tools: but more are tools to them.

Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other; such are the changes that keep the mind in action: we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else and begin a new pursuit.