There is a savor of life and immortality in substantial fare. Like balloons, we are nothing till filled.

Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.

We are only what we are; not what we would be; nor every thing we hope for. We are but a step in a scale, that reaches further above us than below.

One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just after he awakes in the morning.

All experience teaches that, whenever there is a great national establishment, employing large numbers of officials, the public must be reconciled to support many incompetent men; for such is the favoritism and nepotism always prevailing in the purlieus of these establishments, that some incompetent persons are always admitted, to the exclusion of many of the worthy.

Think not, is my eleventh commandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth.

The ancients of the ideal description, instead of trying to turn their impracticable chimeras, as does the modern dreamer, into social and political prodigies, deposited them in great works of art, which still live while states and constitutions have perished, bequeathing to posterity not shameful defects but triumphant successes.