To admit that there is any such thing as chance, in the common acceptation of the term, would be to attempt to establish a power independent of God.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

There are prating coxcombs in the world who would rather talk than listen, although Shakespeare himself were the orator, and human nature the theme!

Anger is practical awkwardness.

It is an easy and vulgar thing to please the mob, and no very arduous task to astonish them.

Ambition is to the mind what the cap is to the falcon; it blinds us first, and then compels us to tower by reason of our blindness.

It is sufficiently humiliating to our nature to reflect that our knowledge is but as she rivulet, our ignorance as the sea. On points of the highest interest, the moment we quit the light of revelation we shall find that Platonism itself is intimately connected with Pyrrhonism, and the deepest inquiry with the darkest doubt.