All human excellence is but comparative. There may be persons who excel us, as much as we fancy we excel the meanest.

Love before marriage is absolutely necessary.

All our pursuits, from childhood to manhood, are only trifles of different sorts and sizes, proportioned to our years and views.

Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity.

A beautiful woman must expect to be more accountable for her steps, than one less attractive.

A good man, though he will value his own countrymen, yet will think as highly of the worthy men of every nation under the sun.

A husband's mother and his wife had generally better be visitors than inmates.

A man may keep a woman, but not his estate.

As a child is indulged or checked in its early follies, a ground is generally laid for the happiness or misery of the future man.

A widow's refusal of a lover is seldom so explicit as to exclude hope.

Handsome husbands often make a wife's heart ache.

Calamity is the test of integrity.

Every one, more or less, loves Power, yet those who most wish for it are seldom the fittest to be trusted with it.

Every scholar, I presume, is not, necessarily, a man of sense.

For the human mind is seldom at stay: If you do not grow better, you will most undoubtedly grow worse.