The Best Thing Next To Wit Is

Nothing Makes Us Better Understand What Trifling Things Providence Thinks He Bestows On Men In Granting Them Wealth, Money, Dignities, And Other Advantages, Than The Manner In Which They Are Distributed And The Kind Of Men Who Have The Largest Share.

If Women Were By Nature What They Make Themselves By Art; If They Were To Lose Suddenly All The Freshness Of Their Complexion, And Their Faces To Become As Fiery And As Leaden As They Make Them With The Red And The Paint They Besmear Themselves With, They Would Consider Themselves The Most Wretched Creatures On Earth.

A Man Is Thirty Years Old Before He Has Any Settled Thoughts Of His Fortune; It Is Not Completed Before Fifty. He Falls To Building In His Old Age, And Dies By The Time His House Is In A Condition To Be Painted And Glazed.

He Who Will Not Listen To Any Advice, Nor Be Corrected In His Writings, Is A Rank Pedant.

What Greater Weakness Can There Be Than Not To Know What Is The Source Of One's Being, Of One's Life, Of One's Senses, Of One's Knowledge, And What Is To Be Their End? What Can Be More Deeply Disheartening Than To Wonder Whether One's Soul Is, Perhaps, A Material Thing, Like A Stone Or A Reptile, Corruptible Like These Base Creatures? Is There Not More Strength And Greatness Of Mind In Admitting The Idea Of A Being Superior To All Other Beings, Who Has Made Them All And To Whom All Owe Their Existence; Of A Being Supremely Perfect, Who Is Pure, Who Had No Beginning And Can Have No Ending, Of Whom Our Soul Is The Image And, So To Speak, A Portion, Being A Spiritual And Immortal Thing?