To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, the end to which every enterprise and labor tends, and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.
Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.
The mind is never satisfied with the objects immediately before it, but is always breaking away from the present moment, and losing itself in schemes of future felicity... The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.
The natural flights of the human mind are not from pleasure to pleasure, but from hope to hope.
The use of travelling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.
Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it.
Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.
He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.
Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.
Leisure and curiosity might soon make great advances in useful knowledge, were they not diverted by minute emulation and laborious trifles.
Getting money is not all a man's business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.
You cannot spend money in luxury without doing good to the poor. Nay, you do more good to them by spending it in luxury, than by giving it for by spending it in luxury, you make them exert industry, whereas by giving it, you keep them idle.
Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and... the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.
There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.
The happiest part of a man's life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.