The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes, and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina.

The brave man wants no charms to encourage him to his duty, and the good man scorns all warnings that would deter him from fulfilling it.

The man who smokes, thinks like a sage and acts like a Samaritan.

In early youth, if we find it difficult to control our feelings, so we find it difficult to vent them in the presence of others. On the spring side of twenty, if anything affects us, we rush to lock ourselves up in our room, or get away into the street or the fields; in our earlier years we are still the savages of nature, and we do as the poor brutes do. The wounded stag leaves the herd; and if there is anything on a dog's faithful heart, he slinks away into a corner.

The cleverness of avarice is but the cunning of imbecility.

Say what we will, we may be sure that ambition is an error. Its wear and tear on the heart are never recompensed.

What is past is past, there is a future left to all men, who have the virtue to repent and the energy to atone.