Motives are better than actions. Men drift into crime. Of evil they do more than they contemplate, and of good they contemplate more than they do.

Many children, many cares; no children, no felicity.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

There is no tyrant like custom, and no freedom where its edicts are not resisted.

Hunting is a relic of the barbarism that once thirsted for human blood, but is now content with the blood of animals.

The nearest approximation to an understanding of life is to feel it--to realize it to the full--to be a profound and inscrutable mystery.

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.