Fortune, like other females, prefers a lover to a master, and submits with impatience to control; but he that wooes her with opportunity and importunity will seldom court her in vain.

If the prodigal quits life in debt to others, the miser quits it still deeper in debt to himself.

Many books require no thought from those who read them, and for a very simple reason; they made no such demand upon those who wrote them.

A Christian builds his fortitude on a better foundation than stoicism; he is pleased with every thing that happens, because he knows it could not happen unless it first pleased God, and that which pleases Him must be best.

There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs.

A wise man may be duped as well as a fool; but the fool publishes the triumph of his deceiver; the wise man is silent, and denies that triumph to an enemy which he would hardly concede to a friend; a triumph that proclaims his own defeat.

In science, reason is the guide; in poetry, taste. The object of the one is truth, which is uniform and indivisible; the object of the other is beauty, which is multiform and varied.