“Anger is never without a reason, but seldom with a good one”

“He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

“He who is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else.”

“Human felicity is produced not as much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen as by little advantages that occur every day.”

“Happiness consists more in the small conveniences of pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.”

“Persons of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into disputation, except lawyers, university men, and men of all sorts that have been bred at Edinburgh.”

“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do”