A sound discretion is not so much indicated by never making a mistake as by never repeating it.

Hope is the best part of our riches. What sufficeth it that we have the wealth of the Indies in our pockets, if we have not the hope of heaven in our souls?

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

The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

All good writing leaves something unexpressed.

The grandest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, in the wide sweep of things, men grow wiser as they grow older, and societies better.

The life even of a just man is a round of petty frauds; that of a knave a series of greater. We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.