With the offspring of genius, the law of parturition is reversed; the throes are in the conception, the pleasure in the birth.

There is no cruelty so inexorable and unrelenting as that which proceeds from a bigoted and presumptuous supposition of doing service to God. The victim of the fanatical persecutor will find that the stronger the motives he can urge for mercy are, the weaker will be his chance for obtaining it, for the merit of his destruction will be supposed to rise in value in proportion as it is effected at the expense of every feeling both of justice and of humanity.

There are only two things in which the false professors of all religions have agreed--to persecute all other sects and to plunder their own.

Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

Money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed. Health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied.

It is in the middle classes of society that all the finest feeling, and the most amiable propensities of our nature do principally nourish and abound. For the good opinion of our fellow-men is the strongest though not the purest motive to virtue. The privations of poverty render us too cold and callous, and the privileges of property too arrogant and confidential, to feel; the first places us beneath the influence of opinion--the second, above it.

It is better to meet danger than to wait for it. He that is on a lee shore, and foresees a hurricane, stands out to sea and encounters a storm to avoid a shipwreck.