Atheism is a system which can communicate neither warmth nor illumination, except from those fagots which your mistaken zeal has lighted up for its destruction.

Shining outward qualities, although they may excite first-rate expectations, are not unusually found to be the companions of second-rate abilities.

In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.

Theory is worth but little, unless it can explain its own phenomena, and it must effect this without contradicting itself; therefore, the facts are sometimes assimilated to the theory, rather than the theory to the facts.

All poets pretend to write for immortality, but the whole tribe have no objection to present pay and present praise.

There are some men who are fortune's favorites, and who, like cats, light forever on their legs.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.