For all the practical purposes of life, truth might as well be in a prison as in the folio of a schoolman; and those who release her from her cobwebbed shelf and teach her to live with men have the merit of liberating, if not of discovering, her.

We shall at all times chance upon men of recondite acquirements, but whose qualifications, from the incommunicative and inactive habits of their owners, are as utterly useless to others as though the possessors had them not.

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker.

Bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret.

Wealth after all is a relative thing since he that has little and wants less is richer than he that has much and wants more.

Men of great and shining qualities do not always succeed in life, but the fault lies more often in themselves than in others.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.