Though it is evident, that not more than one age or people can deserve the censure of being more averse from learning than any other, yet at all times knowledge must have encountered impediments, and wit been mortified with contempt, or harassed with persecution.

Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue.

To live without feeling or exciting sympathy, to be fortunate without adding to the felicity of others, or afflicted without tasting the balm of pity, is a state more gloomy than solitude; it is not retreat, but exclusion from mankind. Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures.

Ignorance, when it is voluntary, is criminal.

Few moments are more pleasing than those in which the mind is concerting measures for a new undertaking.

All unnecessary vows are folly, because they suppose a prescience of the future, which has not been given us.

Praise, like gold and diamonds, owes its value only to its scarcity.