A thorough-paced knave will rarely quarrel with one whom he can cheat: his revenge is plunder; therefore he is usually the most forgiving of beings, upon the principle that if he come to an open rupture, he must defend himself; and this does not suit a man whose vocation it is to keep his hands in the pocket of another.

Great minds had rather deserve contemporaneous applause without obtaining it, than obtain without deserving it. If it follow them it is well, but they will not deviate to follow it.

The family is the most basic unit of government. As the first community to which a person is attached and the first authority under which a person learns to live, the family establishes society's most basic values.

We injure mysteries, which are matters of faith, by any attempt at explanation in order to make them matters of reason. Could they be explained, they would cease to be mysteries; and it has been well said that a thing is not necessarily against reason because it happens to be above it.

In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here--to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves. The Christian messenger cannot think too highly of his prince, nor too humbly of himself.

There is this of good in real evils; they deliver us, while they last, from the petty despotism of all that were imaginary.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.