“True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.”

“They have a Right to censure, that have a Heart to help: The rest is Cruelty, not Justice.(Frequently misquoted as "He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help.")”

“A true friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a friend unchangeably”

“They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.”

“(advice to his children) Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.”

“Time is what we want most,but what we use worst.”

“If we would mend the World, we should mend Ourselves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.”