It is our first duty to serve society, and after we have done that, we may attend wholly to the salvation of our own souls.

It is good sense applied with diligence to what was at first a mere accident, and which by great application grew to be called, by the generality of mankind, a particular genius.

Admiration must be continued by that novelty which first produces it; and how much soever is given, there must always be reason to imagine that more remains.

The first step to greatness is to be honest.

If we estimate dignity by immediate usefulness, agriculture is undoubtedly the first and noblest science.

A blaze first pleases and then tires the sight.

I have always said the first Whig was the Devil.

The accidental prescriptions of authority, when time has procured them veneration, are often confounded with the laws of nature, and those rules are supposed coeval with reason, of which the first rise cannot be discovered.

A woman of fortune being used the handling of money, spends it judiciously; but a woman who gets the command of money for the first time upon her marriage, has such a gust in spending it, that she throws it away with great profusion.