The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure.

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.

oblivion has been noticed as the offspring of silence.

There is scarcely any fault in another which offends us more than vanity, though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little.

No man ever repented of being a Christian on his death bed.

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

Anger is the common refuge of insignificance. People who feel their character to be slight, hope to give it weight by inflation: but the blown bladder at its fullest distention is still empty.