Books, as Dryden has aptly termed them, are spectacles to read nature. Aeschylus and Aristotle, Shakespeare and Bacon, are priests who preach and expound the mysteries of man and the universe. They teach us to understand and feel what we see, to decipher and syllable the hieroglyphics of the senses.

There are men whom you will never dislodge from an opinion, except by taking possession of it yourself.

I bid you conquer in your warfare against your four great enemies, the world, the devil, the flesh, and above all, that obstinate and perverse self-will, unaided by which the other three would be comparatively powerless.

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

We look to our last sickness for repentance, unmindful that it is during a recovery men repent, not during a sickness.

I could hardly feel much confidence in a man who had never been imposed upon.

Some persons take reproof good-humoredly enough, unless you are so unlucky as to hit a sore place. Then they wince and writhe, and start up and knock you down for your impertinence, or wish you good morning.