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

Affliction is the school in which great virtues are acquired, in which great characters are formed.

People talk as if the act of death made a complete change in the nature, as well as in the condition of man. Death is the vehicle to another state of being, but possesses no power to qualify us for that state. In conveying us to a new world it does not give us a new heart.

nothing is more common than to mistake the sign for the thing itself; nor is any practice more frequent than that of endeavoring to acquire the exterior mark, without once thinking to labor after the interior grace.

It is the large aggregate of small things perpetually occurring that robs me of all my time. The expense of learning to read might have been spared in my education, for I never read.

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

If I wished to punish my enemy, I should make him hate somebody.