In politics, merit is rewarded by the possessor being raised, like a target, to a position to be fired at.

What is taken from the fortune, also, may haply be so much lifted from the soul. The greatness of a loss, as the proverb suggests, is determinable, not so much by what we have lost, as by what we have left.

It is ever the invisible that is the object of our profoundest worship. With the lover it is not the seen but the unseen that he muses upon.

Tranquil pleasures last the longest; we are not fitted to bear the burden of great joys.

God, we are told, looked upon the world after he had created it and pronounced it good; but ascetic pietists, in their wisdom, cast their eyes over it, and substantially pronounce it a dead failure, a miserable production, a poor concern.

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Example has far more followers than reason.