Political men, like goats, usually thrive best among inequalities.

I strove with none, for none was worth my strife. Nature I loved and, next to Nature, Art: I warm'd both hands before the fire of life; It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

We must distinguish between felicity and prosperity; for prosperity leads often to ambition, and ambition to disappointment; the course is then over, the wheel turns round but once, while the reaction of goodness and happiness is perpetual.

Circumstances form the character; but, like petrifying matters, they harden while they form.

We may receive so much light as not to see, and so much philosophy as to be worse than foolish.

The only effect of public punishment is to show the rabble how bravely it can be borne; and that every one who hath lost a toe-nail hath suffered worse.

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the easy ones that lie within it.