In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.

Talk without truth is the hollow brass; talk without love is like the tinkling cymbal, and when it does not tinkle it jingles, and when it does not jingle, it jars.

Fear, either as a principle or a motive, is the beginning of all evil.

Lavater told Goethe that on a certain occasion when he held the velvet bag in the church as collector of the offerings, he tried to observe only the hands; and he satisfied himself that in every individual the shape of the hand and of the fingers, the action and sentiment in dropping the gift into the bag, were distinctly different and individually characteristic.

In the art of design, color is to form what verse is to prose,--a more harmonious and luminous vehicle of the thought.

Avarice is to the intellect what sensuality is to the morals.

In our relations with the people around us, we forgive them more readily for what they do, which they can help, than for what they are, which they cannot help.