The constant habit of perusing devout books is so indispensable, that it has been termed the oil of the lamp of prayer. Too much reading, however, and too little meditation, may produce the effect of a lamp inverted; which is extinguished by the very excess of that ailment, whose property is to feed it.

Did not God Sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask, We should be ruined at our own request.

A corrupt practice may be abolished, but a soiled imagination is not easily cleansed.

Where evil may be done, it is right to ponder; where only suffered, know the shortest pause is much too long.

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

Rage is for little wrongs; despair is dumb.

Indeed, I have, alas! outlived almost every one of my contemporaries. One pays dear for living long.