Contentment is better than divinations or visions.

There is a desire of property in the sanest and best men, which Nature seems to have implanted as conservative of her works, and which is necessary to encourage and keep alive the arts.

Experience is our only teacher both in war and peace.

Of all studies, the most delightful and the most useful is biography. The seeds of great events lie near the surface; historians delve too deep for them. No history was ever true. Lives I have read which, if they were not, had the appearance, the interest, and the utility of truth.

What is reading but silent conversation?

If in argument we can make a man angry with us, we have drawn him from his vantage ground and overcome him.

Nothing is pleasanter to me than exploring in a library.