Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

Short as life is, some find it long enough to outlive their characters, their constitutions and their estates.

Idleness is the grand Pacific Ocean of life, and in that stagnant abyss the most salutary things produce no good, the most noxious no evil. Vice, indeed, abstractedly considered, may be, and often is engendered in idleness; but the moment it becomes efficiently vice, it must quit its cradle and cease to be idle.

We make a goddess of Fortune ... and place her in the highest heaven. But it is not fortune that is exalted and powerful, but we ourselves that are abject and weak.

The seeds of repentance are sown in youth by pleasure, but the harvest is reaped in age by pain.