eternity is a depth which no geometry can measure, no arithmetic calculate, no imagination conceive, no rhetoric describe.

Sound economy is a sound understanding brought into action; it is calculation realized; it is the doctrine of proportion reduced to practice; it is foreseeing contingencies, and providing against them.

The artful injury, whose venomed dart scarce wounds the hearing, while it stabs the heart.

My retirement was now become solitude; the former is, I believe, the best state for the mind of man, the latter almost the worst. In complete solitude, the eye wants objects, the heart wants attachments, the understanding wants reciprocation. The character loses its tenderness when it has nothing to strengthen it, its sweetness when it has nothing to soothe it.

If I wanted to punish an enemy, it should be by fastening on him the trouble of constantly hating somebody.

When thou hast truly thanked the Lord for every blessing sent, But little time will then remain for murmur or lament.

parents are too apt to mistake inclination for genius.