A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

It is a strange anomaly that men could be careful to insure their houses, their ships, their merchandise, and yet neglect to insure their lives - surely the most important of all to their families, and more subject to loss.

Neglect mending a small fault and 'twill soon be a great one.

But our great security lies, I think, in our growing strength.

To be thrown upon one's own resources is to be cast into the very lap of fortune; for our faculties then undergo a development and display an energy of which they were previosly unsusceptible.

It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; 'tis rather an embrio state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals?

Some books we read, tho' few there are that hit the happy point where wisdom joins with wit.