Few minds are sunlike, sources of light in themselves and to others: many more are moons that shine with a borrowed radiance. One may easily distinguish the two: the former are always full; the latter only now and then, when their suns are shining full upon them.

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.

When will talkers refrain from evil speaking? When listeners refrain from evil hearing. At present there are many so credulous of evil, they will receive suspicions and impressions against persons whom they don't know, from a person whom they do know--an authority good for nothing.

Curiosity is little more than another name for Hope.

The effects of human wickedness are written on the page of history in characters of blood: but the impression soon fades away; so more blood must be shed to renew it.

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.

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