Our spirits grow gray before our hairs.

Shut not thy purse-strings always against painted distress.

So near are the boundaries of panegyric and invective, that a worn-out sinner is sometimes found to make the best declaimer against sin. The same high-seasoned descriptions which in his unregenerate state served to inflame his appetites, in his new province of a moralist will serve him (a little turned) to expose the enormity of those appetites in other men.

Positively, the best thing a man can have to do, is nothing, and next to that perhaps — good works.

When I am not walking, I am reading. I cannot sit and think.

We love to chew the cud of a foregone vision; to collect the scattered rays of a brighter phantasm, or act over again, with firmer nerves, the sadder nocturnal tragedies.

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.