She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.

Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.

The further we advance in knowledge, the more simplicity shall we discover in those primary rules that regulate all the apparently endless, complicated, and multiform operations of the Godhead.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

A coxcomb begins by determining that his own profession is the first; and he finishes by deciding that he is the first of profession.