Since the generality of persons act from impulse, much more than from principle, men are neither so good nor so bad as we are apt to think them.

It is a proof of our natural bias to evil, that gain is slower and harder than loss in all things good; but in all things bad getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.

Nothing is farther than earth from heaven; nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

To Adam Paradise was home. To the good among his descendants home is paradise.

What a person praises is perhaps a surer standard, even than what he condemns, of his own character, information and abilities.