The science of mathematics performs more than it promises, but the science of metaphysics promises more than it performs.

Villainy that is vigilant will be an overmatch for virtue, if she slumber at her post.

Speaking generally, no man appears great to his contemporaries, for the same reason that no man is great to his servants--both know too much of him.

All who have been great and good without Christianity would have been much greater and better with it. If there be, amongst the sons of men, a single exception to this maxim, the divine Socrates may be allowed to put in the strongest claim. It was his high ambition to deserve, by deeds, not by creeds, an unrevealed heaven, and by works, not by faith, to enter an unpromised land.

There are many that despise half the world; but if there be any that despise the whole of it, it is because the other half despises them.

The brightest thunder-bolt is elicited from the darkest storm.

A semi-civilized state of society, equally removed from the extremes of barbarity and of refinement, seems to be that particular meridian under which all the reciprocities and gratuities of hospitality do most readily flourish and abound. For it so happens that the ease, the luxury, and the abundance of the highest state of civilization, are as productive of selfishness, as the difficulties, the privations, and the sterilities of he lowest.