It is not so important to know everything as to know the exact value of everything, to appreciate what we learn and to arrange what we know.

it may be in morals as it is in optics, the eye and the object may come too close to each other, to answer the end of vision. There are certain faults which press too near our self-love to be even perceptible to us.

Repentance is not completed by a single act, it must be incorporated into our mind, till it become a fixed state, arising from a continual sense of our need of it.

Pleasure is by much the most laborious trade I know, especially for those who have not a vocation to it.

We do not so much want books for good people, as books which will make bad ones better.

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

How much it is to be regretted, that the British ladies should ever sit down contented to polish, when they are able to reform; to entertain, when they might instruct; and to dazzle for an hour, when they are candidates for eternity!