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.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Earth took her shining station as a star, In Heaven's dark hall, high up the crowd of worlds.

It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

A good thought is indeed a great boon, for which God is to be first thanked; next he who is the first to utter it, and then, in a lesser, but still in a considerable degree, the friend who is the first to quote it to us. Whoever adopts and circulates a just thought, participates in the merit that originated it.

The legitimate aim of criticism is to direct attention to the excellent. The bad will dig its own grave, and the imperfect may safely be left to that final neglect from which no amount of present undeserved popularity can rescue it.

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