“Justice is my being allowed to do whatever I like. Injustice is whatever prevents my doing so.”

“Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.”

“Prosperity is too apt to prevent us from examining our conduct; but adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.”

“Being in a ship is like being in jail, with the chance of being drowned.”

“All severity that does not tend to increase good, or prevent evil, is idle.”

“It is strange that there should be so little reading in the world, and so much writing. People in general do not willingly read, if they can have any thing else to amuse them.”

“I look upon every day to be lost in which I do not make a new acquaintance.”