ch when it
is almost empty, than when a crowd is at the door.

Few are qualified to shine in company; but it is in most men's power to
be agreeable. The reason, therefore, why conversation runs so low at
present, is not the defect of understanding, but pride, vanity,
ill-nature, affectation, singularity, positiveness, or some other vice,
the effect of a wrong education.

To be vain is rather a mark of humility than pride. Vain men delight in
telling what honours have been done them, what great company they have
kept, and the like, by which they plainly confess that these honours were
more than their due, and such as their friends would not believe if they
had not been told: whereas a man truly proud thinks the greatest honours
below his merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver
it as a maxim, that whoever desires the character of a proud man, ought
to conceal his vanity.

Law, in a free country, is, or ought to be, the determination of the
majority of those who have property in land.

One argument used to the disadvantage of Providence I take to be a very
strong one in its defence. It is objected that storms and tempests,
unfruitful seasons, serpents, spiders, flies, and other noxious or
troublesome animals, with many more instances of the like kind, discover
an imperfection in nature, because human life would be much easier
without them; but the design of Providence may clearly be perceived in
this proceeding. The motions of the sun and moon--in short, the whole
system of the universe, as far as philosophers have been able to discover
and observe, are in the utmost degree of regularity and perfection; but
wherever God hath left to man the power of interposing a remedy by
thought or labour, there he hath placed things in a state of
imperfection, on purpose to stir up human industry, without which life
would stagnate, or, indeed, rather, could not subsist at all: _Curis
accuunt mortalia corda_.

Praise is the daughter of present power.

How inconsistent is man with himself!

I have known several persons of great fame for wisdom in public affairs
and counsels governed by foolish servants.

I have known great Ministers, distinguished for wit and learning, who
preferred none but dunces.

I have known men of great valour cowards to their wives.

I have known men of the greatest cunning perpetually cheated.

I knew three great Ministers, who could exactly compute and settle the
accounts o