Beauty is but the sensible image of the infinite. Like truth and justice, it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law, it is a companion of the soul.

Truth is not exciting enough to those who depend on the characters and lives of their neighbors for all their amusement.

By common consent, gray hairs are a crown of glory: the only object of respect that can never excite envy.

The exact measure of the progress of civilization is the degree in which the intelligence of the common mind has prevailed over wealth and brute force.

Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.

The prejudices of ignorance are more easily removed than the prejudices of interest; the first are blindly adopted; the second wilfully preferred.

Avarice is the vice of declining years.