No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

There is no idleness, by which we are so easily seduced, as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.

They make a rout about universal liberty, without considering that all that is to be valued, or indeed can be enjoyed by individuals, is private liberty.

There is not, perhaps, to a mind well instructed, a more painful occurrence, than the death of one we have injured without reparation.

Books without the knowledge of life are useless.