The sweetest path of life leads through the avenues of learning, and whoever can open up the way for another, ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.

What praise is implied in the simple epithet useful! What reproach in the contrary.

Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: andhas often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.

To be a philosophical sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential to being a sound, believing Christian.

There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us.

Friendship is a calm and sedate affection, conducted by reason and cemented by habit; springing from long acquaintance and mutual obligations, without jealousies or fears, and without those feverish fits of heat and cold, which cause such an agreeable torment in the amorous passion.

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.