Poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty--the shame of being thought poor--it is a great and fatal weakness, though arising in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves.

A couple of flitches of bacon are worth fifty thousand Methodist sermons and religious tracts. They are great softeners of temper and promoters of domestic harmony.

The smallness of our desires may contribute reasonably to our wealth.

Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt.

Without bread all is misery.

Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or rather, from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has been honored by the name of "speculation"; but which ought to be called Gambling.

It is not the greatness of a man's means that makes him independent, so much as the smallness of his wants.