When will talkers refrain from evil speaking: when listeners refrain from evil-hearing.

It is well for us that we are born babies in intellect. Could we understand half what mothers say and do to their infants, we should be filled with a conceit of our own importance, which would render us insupportable through life. Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

We like slipping, but not falling; our real anxiety is to be tempted enough.

Moral prejudices are the stopgaps of virtue; and, as is the case with other stopgaps, it is often more difficult to get either out or in through them than through any other part of the fence.

The difference between those whom the world esteems as good and those whom it condemns as bad, is in many cases little else than that the former have been better sheltered from temptation.

A youth's love is the more passionate; virgin love is the more idolatrous.

One saves oneself much pain, by taking pains; much trouble, by taking trouble.