I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

It was said of Euripides, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of Shakespeare, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and economical prudence.

Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.

Discord generally operates in little things; it is inflamed ... by contrariety of taste oftener than principles.

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.

I do not wonder that, where the monastick life is permitted, every order finds votaries, and every monastery inhabitants. Men will submit to any rule, by which they may be exempted from the tyranny of caprice and of chance. They are glad to supply by external authority their own want of constancy and resolution, and court the government of others, when long experience has convinced them of their own inability to govern themselves.

Pain is less subject than pleasure to careless expression.