It is good to act as if. It is even better to grow to the point where it is no longer an act.

That is true beauty which has not only a substance, but a spirit; a beauty that we must intimately know, justly to appreciate.

Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen. Like friends, too, we should return to them again and again for, like true friends, they will never fail us - never cease to instruct - never cloy.

Posthumous charities are the very essence of selfishness when bequeathed by those who, even alive, would part with nothing.

There are many women who have never intrigued, and many men who have never gamed; but those who have done either but once are very extraordinary animals.

The sceptic, when he plunges into the depths of infidelity, like the miser who leaps from the shipwreck, will find that the treasures which he bears about him will only sink him deeper in the abyss.

No men deserve the title of infidels so little as those to whom it has been usually applied; let any of those who renounce Christianity, write fairly down in a book all the absurdities that they believe instead of it, and they will find that it requires more faith to reject Christianity than to embrace it.