The present is never a happy state to any human being.

Every man that has felt pain knows how little all other comforts can gladden him to whom health is denied. Yet who is there does not sometimes hazard it for the enjoyment of an hour?

The happiness of building lasted but a little while, for though I love to spend, I hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that to build is to be robbed.

The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.

To prevent evil is the great end of government, the end for which vigilance and severity are properly employed.

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

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the Fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the groundwork of virtue.