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.

Our actions must clothe us with an immortality loathsome or glorious.

Let us not be too prodigal when we are young, nor too parsimonious when we are old. Otherwise we shall fall into the common error of those, who, when they had the power to enjoy, had not the prudence to acquire; and when they had the prudence to acquire, had no longer the power to enjoy.

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past, even while we attempt to define it.

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

From its very inaction, idleness ultimately becomes the most active cause of evil; as a palsy is more to be dreaded than a fever. The Turks have a proverb which says that the devil tempts all other men, but that idle men tempt the devil.

It is with disease of the mind, as with those of the body; we are half dead before we understand our disorder, and half cured when we do.