Nature never gives everything at once.

So willing is every man to flatter himself, that the difference between approving laws, and obeying them, is frequently forgotten; he that acknowledges the obligations of morality and pleases his vanity with enforcing them to others, concludes himself zealous in the cause of virtue.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

Courtesy and good-humour are often found with little real worth.

Plenty is the original cause of many of our needs; and even the poverty, which is so frequent and distressful in civilized nations, proceeds often from that change of manners which opulence has produced. Nature makes us poor only when we want necessaries; but custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities.

Nothing concentrates one's mind so much as the realization that one is going to be hanged in the morning!

The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence.