An Irish man fights before he reasons, a Scotchman reasons before he fights, an Englishman is not particular as to the order of precedence, but will do either to accommodate his customers.

Folly disgusts us less by her ignorance than pedantry by her learning.

Alas! What is man? Whether he be deprived of that light which is from on high, of whether he discard it, a frail and trembling creature; standing on time, that bleak and narrow isthmus between two eternities, he sees nothing but impenetrable darkness on the one hand, and doubt, distrust, and conjecture, still more perplexing, on the other. Most gladly would he take an observation, as to whence he has come, or whither he is going; alas, he has not the means: his telescope is too dim, his compass too wavering, his plummet too short.

None of us are so much praised or censured as we think.

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.

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

The greatest genius is never so great as when it is chastised and subdued by the highest reason.