There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.

Speak properly, and in as few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not ostentation, but to be understood.

Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows, and to be equally avoided.

A Garden, an Elaboratory, a Work - house, Improvements and Breeding, are pleasant and Profitable Diversions to the Idle and Ingenious: For here they miss Ill Company, and converse with Nature and Art; whose Variety are equally grateful and instructing; and preserve a good Constitution of Body and Mind.

To have religion upon authority, and not upon conviction, is like a finger-watch, to be set forwards or backwards, as he pleases that has it in keeping.

If a civil word or two will render a man happy, he must be a wretch indeed who will not give them to him. Such a disposition is like lighting another man's candle by one's own, which loses none of its brilliancy by what the other gains.

Truth never lost ground by enquiry.