Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

Every trait of beauty may be referred to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, or heroism. St. Pierre To cultivate the sense of the beautiful, is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness.

Ideas are like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down so to speak to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings-the way is never ending and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable.

Judicious praise is to children what the sun is to flowers.

Adhesion to one idea is monomania; to few, slavery.

Weakness ineffectually seeks to disguise itself,--like a drunken man trying to show how sober he is.

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words.