Seeking is not always the way to find.

The thoughtful excitement of lonely rambles, of gardening, and of other like occupations, where the mind has leisure to must during the healthful activity of the body, with the fresh and wakeful breezes blowing round it.

Poetry is to philosophy what the Sabbath is to the rest of the week.

If you wish a general to be beaten, send him a ream full of instructions; if you wish him to succeed, give him a destination, and bid him conquer.

The praises of others may be of use in teaching us, not what we are, but what we ought to be.

The mind is like a trunk: if well-packed, it holds almost every thing; if ill-packed, next to nothing.

They who boast of their tolerance merely give others leave to be as careless about religion as they are themselves. A walrus might as well pride itself on its endurance of cold.