The best evidence of merit is a cordial recognition of it whenever and wherever it may be found.

The loss of a beloved connection awakens an interest in Heaven before unfelt.

Discretion is the salt, and fancy the sugar of life; the one preserves, the other sweetens it.

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.

A better principle than this, that "the majority shall rule," is this other, that justice shall rule. "Justice," says the code of Justinian, "is the constant and perpetual desire to render every man his due.

We give our best affections to the beautiful, only our second best to the useful.

The highest excellence is seldom attained in more than one vocation. The roads leading to distinction in separate pursuits diverge, and the nearer we approach the one, the farther we recede from the other.