Truth can hardly be expected to adapt herself to the crooked policy and wily sinuosities of worldly affairs; for truth, like light, travels only in straight lines.

It is far better to borrow experience than to buy it.

If there be a pleasure on earth which angels cannot enjoy, and which they might almost envy man the possession of, it is the power of relieving distress--if there be a pain which devils might pity man for enduring, it is the death-bed reflection that we have possessed the power of doing good, but that we have abused and perverted it to purposes of ill.

When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.

The study of mathematics, like the Nile, begins in minuteness but ends in magnificence.

Grant graciously what you cannot refuse safely and conciliate those you cannot conquer.

If a cause be good, the most violent attack of its enemies will not injure it so much as an injudicious defence of it by its friends.