Body and mind, like man and wife, do not always agree to die together.

When millions applaud you seriously ask yourself what harm you have done; and when they disapprove you, what good.

Some reputed saints that have been canonized ought to have been cannonaded.

The true motives of our actions, like the real pipes of an organ, are usually concealed; but the gilded and hollow pretext is pompously placed in the front for show.

Heaven may have happiness as utterly unknown to us as the gift of perfect vision would be to a man born blind. If we consider the inlets of pleasure from five senses only, we may be sure that the same Being who created us could have given us five hundred, if He had pleased.

In answering an opponent, arrange your ideas, but not your words.

If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.