In order to try whether a vessel be leaky, we first prove it with water before we trust it with wine.

Silence is less injurious than a weak reply.

Secrecy of design, when combined with rapidity of execution, like me column that guided Israel in the deserts, becomes the guardian pillar of light and fire to our friends, a cloud of overwhelming and impenetrable darkness to our enemies.

He that has never suffered extreme adversity knows not the full extent of his own depravation.

He [the miser] falls down and worships the god of this world, but will have neither its pomps, its vanities nor its pleasures for his trouble.

Death is like thunder in two particulars; we are alarmed, at the sound of it; and it is formidable only from that which preceded it.

The martyrs to vice far exceed the martyrs to virtue, both in endurance and in number.