There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.

An eager pursuit of fortune is inconsistent with a severe devotion to truth. The heart must grow tranquil before the thought can become searching.

Courage enlarges, cowardice diminishes resources.

The passions are like fire, useful in a thousand ways and dangerous only in one, through their excess.

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

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.