No adulation; 'tis the death of virtue; Who flatters, is of all mankind the lowest Save he who courts the flattery.

It is a part of Christianity to convert every natural talent to a religious use.

We are too ready to imagine that we are religious, because we know something of religion. We appropriate to ourselves the pious sentiments we read, and we talk as if the thoughts of other men's heads were really the feelings of our own hearts. But piety has not its seat in the memory, but in the affections, for which however the memory is an excellent purveyor, though a bad substitute.

Oh! the joy Of young ideas painted on the mind, In the warm glowing colors fancy spreads On objects not yet known, when all is new, And all is lovely.

A faint endeavor ends in a sure defeat.

Expectation ... quickens desire, while possession deadens it.

it is the modern nature of goodness to exert itself quietly, while a few characters of the opposite cast seem, by the rumor of their exploits, to fill the world; and by their noise to multiply their numbers.