To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity; the next is, to strive, and deserve to conquer: but he whose life has passed without a contest, and who can boast neither success nor merit, can survey himself only as a useless filler of existence; ad if he is content with his own character, must owe his satisfaction to insensibility.

Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.

Among other pleasing errors of young minds is the opinion of their own importance. He that has not yet remarked, how little attention his contemporaries can spare from themselves, conceives all eyes turned upon himself, and imagines everyone that approaches him to be an enemy or a follower, an admirer or a spy.

I am sorry I have not learnt to play at cards. It is very useful in life: it generates kindness, and consolidates society.

Frequent discontent must proceed from frequent hardships.

A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one; no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down.

He that is warm for truth, and fearless in its defense, performs one of the duties of a good man; he strenghtens his own conviction, and guards others from delusion; but steadiness of belief, and boldness of profession, are yet only part of the form of godliness.