He who seeks repentance for the past, should woo the angel virtue for the future.

In science, address the few, in literature the many. In science, the few must dictate opinion to the many; in literature, the many, sooner or later, force their judgement on the few.

Wrap thyself in the decent veil that the arts or the graces weave for thee, O human nature! It is only the statue of marble whose nakedness the eye can behold without shame and offence!

Though no participator in the joy of more vehement sport, I have a pleasure that I cannot reconcile to my abstract notions of the tenderness due to dumb creatures in the tranquil cruelty of angling. I can only palliate the wanton destructiveness of my amusement by trying to assure myself that my pleasure does not spring from the success of the treachery I practise toward a poor little fish, but rather from that innocent revelry in the luxuriance of summer life which only anglers enjoy to the utmost.

When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.

I would rather have five energetic and competent enemies than one fool friend.

The same refinement which brings us new pleasures exposes us to new pains.