Constant success shows us but one side of the world; adversity brings out the reverse of the picture.

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.

The press is the foe of rhetoric, but the friend of reason.

He that is gone so far as to cut the claws of the lion, will not feel himself quite secure, until he has also drawn his teeth.

The hand that unnerved Belshazzar derived its most horrifying influence from the want of a body, and death itself is not formidable in what we do know of it, but in what we do not.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

Emulation has been termed a spur to virtue, and assumes to be a spur of gold. But it is a spur composed of baser materials, and if tried in the furnace will be found to want that fixedness which is the characteristic of gold. He that pursues virtue, only to surpass others, is not far from wishing others less forward than himself; and he that rejoices too much at his own perfections will be too little grieved at the defects of other men.