Even Nature is observed to have her playful moods or aspects, of which man sometimes seems to be the sport.

Hence it will not do for the Landlord to possess too fine a nature.... He must have no idiosyncracies, no particular bents or tendencies to this or that, but a general, uniform, and healthy development, such as his portly person indicates, offering himself equally on all sides to men.

If Nature is our mother, then God is our father.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

There are two classes of authors: the one write the history of their times, the other their biography.

It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity the farthest sundered nations and generations consent to give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astr

I never was so rapid in my virtue but my vice kept up with me.