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.

Tears are nature's lotion for the eyes. The eyes see better for being washed by them.

In the assurance of strength there is strength; and they are the weakest, however strong, who have no faith in themselves or their powers.

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins?

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

No single character is ever so great that a nation can afford to form itself upon it. Imitation belittles. This appears in the instance of the Chinese. The Chinese are so many Confucii; in miniature. And so with the Jews. Moses, the lawgiver, is poorly represented by Moses, the old clothesman ; or even by Dives, the hanker.

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.