It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.

It is not every man that can afford to wear a shabby coat.

We cannot think too highly of our nature, nor too humbly of ourselves.

It is not until we have passed through the furnace that we are made to know how much dross there is in our composition.

The greatest miracle that the Almighty could perform would be to make a bad man happy, even in heaven; he must unparadise that blessed place to accomplish it. In its primary signification, all vice--that is, all excess--brings its own punishment even here.

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