Mystery magnifies danger as the fog the sun.

As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm, the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.

If a book really wants the patronage of a great name, it is a bad book; and if it be a good book, it wants it not.

She is deceitful as the calm that precedes the hurricane, smooth as the water on the verge of the cataract, and beautiful as the rainbow, that smiling daughter of the storm; but, like the mirage in the desert, she tantalizes us with a delusion that distance creates, and that contiguity destroys.

We are not more ingenious in searching out bad motives for good actions when performed by others, than good motives for bad actions when performed by ourselves.

The seat of perfect contentment is in the head; for every individual is thoroughly satisfied with his own proportion of brains.

Some well-meaning Christians tremble for their salvation, because they have never gone through that valley of tears and of sorrow, which they have been taught to consider as an ordeal that must be passed through before they can arrive at regeneration. To satisfy such minds, it may be observed, that the slightest sorrow for sin is sufficient, if it produce amendment, and that the greatest is insufficient, if it do not.