All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

Rakes are more suspicious than honest men.

People of little understanding are most apt to be angry when their sense is called into question.

Parents sometimes make not those allowances for youth, which, when young, they wished to be made for themselves.

A good man will extend his munificence to the industrious poor of all persuasions reduced by age, infirmity, or accident; to thosewho labour under incurable maladies; and to the youth of either sex, who are capable of beginning the world with advantage, but have not the means.

I know not my own heart if it be not absolutely free.

The World is not enough used to this way of writing, to the moment. It knows not that in the minutiae lie often the unfoldings ofthe Story, as well as of the heart; and judges of an action undecided, as if it were absolutely decided.