“If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.”

Look what a little vain dust we are!

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Words, when well chosen, have so great a force in them, that a description often gives us more lively ideas than the sight of things themselves.

To be exempt from the passions with which others are tormented, is the only pleasing solitude.

Wit is the fetching of congruity out of incongruity.

A man’s first care should be to avoid the reproaches of his own heart.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

When all thy mercies, O my God, My rising soul surveys, Transported with the view I’m lost, in wonder, love and praise.

Nature in her whole drama never drew such a part; she has sometimes made a fool, but a coxcomb is always of a man’s own making.

When I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tomb of the parents themselves,

Animals, in their generation, are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass.

Among all kinds of Writing, there is none in which Authors are more apt to miscarry than in Works of Humour, as there is none in which they are more ambitious to excel.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

Let freedom never perish in your hands.

The great difference is, that the first knows how to pick and cull his thoughts for conversation, by suppressing some, and communicating others; whereas the other lets them all indifferently fly out in words.

A contented mind is the greatest blessing a man can enjoy in this world.