It is the modest, not the presumptuous, inquirer who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths. One follows Nature and Nature's God; that is, he follows God in his works and in his word.

Whatever study tends neither directly nor indirectly to make us better men and citizens is at best but a specious and ingenious sort of idleness; and the knowledge we acquire by it only a creditable kind of ignorance, nothing more.

A long novitiate of acquaintance should precede the vows of friendship.

Worry is the only insupportable misfortune of life.

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of reason.

I have read somewhere or other, - in Dionysius of Halicarnassus, I think, - that history is philosophy teaching by examples.

To converse with historians is to keep good company; many of them were excellent men, and those who were not, have taken care to appear such in their writings.