A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

Vain hopes are like certain dreams of those who wake.

It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity.

Men, even when alone, lighten their labors by song, however rude it may be.

In almost everything, experience is more valuable than precept.

While we are making up our minds as to when we shall begin. the opportunity is lost.

To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.

Forbidden pleasures alone are loved immoderately; when lawful, they do not excite desire.

Whilst we deliberate how to begin a thing, it grows too late to begin it.

Our minds are like our stomaches; they are whetted by the change of their food, and variety supplies both with fresh appetite.

Nothing is more dangerous to men than a sudden change of fortune.

The pretended admission of a fault on our part creates an excellent impression.

The perfection of art is to conceal art.

That which prematurely arrives at perfection soon perishes.

Those who wish to appear wise among fools, among the wise seem foolish.

It is fitting that a liar should be a man of good memory.

We must form our minds by reading deep rather than wide.

A laugh costs too much when bought at the expense of virtue.

The prosperous can not easily form a right idea of misery.

Everything that has a beginning comes to an end.

A laugh, if purchased at the expense of propriety, costs too much.

Though ambition in itself is a vice, yet it is often the parent of virtues.

While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.

God, that all-powerful Creator of nature and architect of the world, has impressed man with no character so proper to distinguish him from other animals, as by the faculty of speech.

We excuse our sloth under the pretext of difficulty.

Fear of the future is worse than one's present fortune.

For it would have been better that man should have been born dumb, nay, void of all reason, rather than that he should employ the gifts of Providence to the destruction of his neighbor.

Where evil habits are once settled, they are more easily broken than mended.

The gifts of nature are infinite in their variety, and mind differs from mind almost as much as body from body.

He who speaks evil only differs from his who does evil in that he lacks opportunity.

Let us search into the records of Holy Writ, if out of this their great charter, there be not a seal grant of a lesser, though like privilege, and this by virtue of Christ, in that we have the honour to be accounted Abraham's seed as truly as they.

Prosperity is the measure or touchstone of virtue, for it is less difficult to bear misfortune than to remain uncorrupted by pleasure.

Many have said of Alchemy, that it is for the making of gold and silver. For me such is not the aim, but to consider only what virtue and power may lie in medicines.

All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise, not from defects in their Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from the downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.

Virtue is defined to be mediocrity, of which either extreme is vice.

Virtue consisted in avoiding scandal and venereal disease.

Remorse is virtue's root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Peace is not the absence of war, but a virtue based on strength of character.

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful.

Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.

An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it, can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery.

Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.

Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

It is only the poor who pay cash, and that not from virtue, but because they are refused credit.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.