The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age.

Self-denial is often the sacrifice of one sort of self-love for another.

No two things differ more than hurry and despatch. Hurry is the mark of a weak mind; despatch of a strong one.

He that has energy enough in his constitution to root out a vice should go a little further, and try to plant a virtue in its place; otherwise he will have his labor to renew. A strong soil that has produced weeds may be made to produce wheat with far less difficulty than it would cost to make it produce nothing.

In civil jurisprudence it too often happens that there is so much law, that there is no room for justice, and that the claimant expires of wrong in the midst of right, as mariners die of thirst in the midst of water.

The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.

Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires a something that riches cannot give.