Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in the night. God said, Let Newton be! and all was light!

The most positive men are the most credulous.

Genius creates, and taste preserves. Taste is the good sense of genius; without taste, genius is only sublime folly.

Never elated when someone's oppressed, never dejected when another one's blessed.

Happy the man whose wish and care a few paternal acres bound, content to breathe his native air in his own ground.

The learned is happy, nature to explore; The fool is happy, that he knows no more.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn't much better than tedious disease.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

And die of nothing but a rage to live.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

Education forms the common mind. Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.

If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.