Our very best friends have a tincture of jealousy even in their friendship; and when they hear us praised by others, will ascribe it to sinister and interested motives if they can.

It is almost as difficult to make a man unlearn his errors as his knowledge.

The greatest and most amiable privilege which the rich enjoy over the poor is that which they exercise the least--the privilege of making others happy.

As no roads are so rough as those that have just been mended, so no sinners are so intolerant as those that have just turned saints.

Where true religion has prevented one crime, false religions have afforded a pretext for a thousand.

It has been observed that a dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant will see farther than the giant himself; and the moderns, standing as they do on the vantage ground of former discoveries and uniting all the fruits of the experience of their forefathers, with their own actual observation, may be admitted to enjoy a more enlarged and comprehensive view of things than the ancients themselves.

Great men, like comets, are eccentric in their courses, and formed to do extensive good by modes unintelligible to vulgar minds.