I hardly know so melancholy a reflection as that parents are necessarily the sole directors of the management of children, whether they have or have not judgment, penetration or taste to perform the task.

Those men who are commended by everybody must be very extraordinary men; or, which is more probable, very inconsiderable men.

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

We should do by our cunning as we do by our courage--always have it ready to defend ourselves, never to offend others.

What an argument in favor of social connections is the observation that by communicating our grief we have less, and by communicating our pleasure we have more.

We laugh heartily to see a whole flock of sheep jump because one did so. Might not one imagine that superior beings do the same, and for exactly the same reason?

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.