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.

No estimate is more in danger of erroneous calculations than those by which a man computes the force of his own genius.

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy.

Spring is the season of gaiety, and winter of terror; in spring the heart of tranquility dances to the melody of the groves, and the eye of benevolence sparkles at the sight of happiness and plenty: in winter, compassion melts at universal calamity, and the tear of softness starts at the wailing of hunger and the cries of the creation in distress

Every old man complains of the growing depravity of the world, of the petulance and insolence of the rising generation.

Sir, you must not neglect doing a thing immediately good from fear of remote evil; - from fear of its being abused.

Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.