Life has been compared to a race, but the allusion improves by observing, that the most swift are usually the least manageable and the most likely to stray from the course. Great abilities have always been less serviceable to the possessors than moderate ones.

Argument

There is no arguing with him, for if his pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the butt end of it.

Business

Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.

Competition

Surely the best way to meet the enemy is head on in the field and not wait till they plunder our very homes.

Critics and Criticism

Write how you want, the critic shall show the world you could have written better.

Dress

A modest woman, dressed out in all her finery, is the most tremendous object of the whole creation.

Excellence

To aim at excellence, our reputation, and friends, and all must be ventured; to aim at the average we run no risk and provide little service.

Fools and Foolishness

No one but a fool would measure their satisfaction by what the world thinks of it.

Happiness

If frugality were established in the state, and if our expenses were laid out to meet needs rather than superfluities of life, there might be fewer wants, and even fewer pleasures, but infinitely more happiness.

Laughter

The best way to make your audience laugh is to start laughing yourself.

Life and Living

Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.

Manners

A traveler of taste will notice that the wise are polite all over the world, but the fool only at home.

Modesty

Modesty seldom resides in a breast that is not enriched with nobler virtues.

Passion

It seemed to me pretty plain, that they had more of love than matrimony in them.

Pleasure

Our pleasures are short, and can only charm at intervals; love is a method of protraction our greatest pleasure.

Retirement

We had no revolutions to fear, nor fatigues to undergo; all our adventures were by the fireside, and all our migrations from the blue bed to the brown.

Romance and Romanticism

She who makes her husband and her children happy, who reclaims the one from vice, and trains up the other to virtue, is a much greater character than the ladies described in romance, whose whole occupation is to murder mankind with shafts from their quiver or their eyes.

Tenderness

Tenderness is a virtue.

Wealth

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

Work

Like the bee, we should make our industry our amusement.