The intellect of the wise is like glass; it admits the light of heaven and reflects it.

Friendship closes its eye rather than see the moon eclipsed; while malice denies that it is ever at the full.

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

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.

Few persons have courage enough to appear as good as they really are.

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

Every Irishman, the saying goes, has a potato in his head.