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.

In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.

Brutes leave ingratitude to man.

Whenever we find ourselves more inclined to persecute than to persuade, we may then be certain that our zeal has more of pride in it than of charity.

Mystery magnifies danger, as a fog the sun, the hand that warned Belshazzar derived its horrifying effect from the want of a body.

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.

The art of declamation has been sinking in value from the moment that speakers were foolish enough to publish, and hearers wise enough to read.