Good-humor will sometimes conquer ill-humor, but ill-humor will conquer it oftener; and for this plain reason, good-humor must operate on generosity, ill-humor on meanness.

Human knowledge is the parent of doubt.

Surely no man can reflect, without wonder upon the vicissitudes of human life arising from causes in the highest degree accidental and trifling. If you trace the necessary concatenation of human events a very little way back, you may perhaps discover that a person's very going in or out of a door has been the means of coloring with misery or happiness the remaining current of his life.

Man is the only creature endowed with the power of laughter.

Avarice starves its possessor to fatten those who come after, and who are eagerly awaiting the demise of the accumulator.

I hardly know so true a mark of a little mind as the servile imitation of others.

A proud man never shows his pride so much as when he is civil.