It is our relation to circumstances that determine their influence over us. The same wind that blows one ship into port may blow another off shore.

Partial culture runs to the ornate, extreme culture to simplicity.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Vanity in an old man is charming. It is a proof of an open, nature. Eighty winters have not frozen him up, or taught him concealments. In a young person it is simply allowable; we do not expect him to be above it.

There are some weaknesses that are peculiar and distinctive to generous characters, as freckles are to a fair skin.

Women seldom forfeit their claims to respect to men whom they respect.

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.