At the best, sarcasms, bitter irony, scathing wit, are a sort of swordplay of the mind. You pink your adversary, and he is forthwith dead; and then you deserve to be hung for it.

Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome them, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.

Most books fail, not so much from a want of ability in their authors, as from an absence in their productions of a thorough development of their ability.

Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.

Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.

Activity and sadness are incompatible.

Pure motives do not insure perfect results.