Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved.

The whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other

He that dies a martyr proves that he was not a knave, but by no means that he was not a fool; since the most absurd doctrines are not without such evidence as martyrdom can produce. A martyr, therefore, by the mere act of suffering, can prove nothing but his own faith.

Novels may teach us as wholesome a moral as the pulpit. There are "sermons in stones," in healthy books, and "good in everything.

No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain.

Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.

Falsehood is often rocked by truth, but she soon outgrows her cradle and discards her nurse.