Good company, lively conversation, and the endearments of friendship fill the mind with great pleasure.

Politics and the pulpit are terms that have little agreement. No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity. The cause of civil liberty and civil government gains as little as that of religion by this confusion of duties. Those who quit their proper character to assume what does not belong to them are, for the greater part, ignorant both of the character they leave and of the character they assume.

Men have no right to put the well-being of the present generation wholly out of the question. Perhaps the only moral trust with any certainty in our hands is the care of our own time.

Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and a series of unconnected arts. Though just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.

The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.

Of this stamp is the cant of, Not men, but measures.