Weak men often from the very principle of their weakness derive a certain susceptibility; delicacy and taste which render them, in those particulars, much superior to men of stronger and more consistent minds, who laugh at them.

Vanity is the poison of agreeableness; yet as poison, when artfully and properly applied, has a salutary effect in medicine, so has vanity in the commerce and society of the world.

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

Whatever natural right men may have to freedom and independency, it is manifest that some men have a natural ascendency over others.

Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

The brains of a pedant however full, are vacant.

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.