How rare it is to find a soul quiet enough to hear God speak.

There is a set of religious, or rather moral, writings which teach that virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to misery in this world. A very wholesome and comfortable doctrine, and to which we have but one objection, namely, that it is not true.

Had we not faults of our own, we should take less pleasure in complaining of others.

The past but lives in written words: a thousand ages were blank if books had not evoked their ghosts, and kept the pale unbodied shades to warn us from fleshless lips.

Little opportunities should be improved.

Exactness and neatness in moderation is a virtue, but carried to extremes narrows the mind.