Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

Schoolhouses are the republican line of fortifications.

One thing I certainly never was made for, and that is to put principles on and off at the dictation of a party, as a lackey changes his livery at his master's command.

Knowledge is but an instrument, which the profligate and the flagitious may use as well as the brave and the just.

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.

Let but the public mind become once thoroughly corrupt, and all attempts to secure property, liberty or life, by mere force of laws written on parchment, will be as vain as to put up printed notices in an orchard to keep off the canker-worms.

The most formidable attribute of temptation is its increasing power, its accelerating ratio of velocity. Every act of repetition increases power, diminishes resistance. It is like the letting out of waters-where a drop can go, a river can go. Whoever yields to temptation, subjects himself to the law of falling bodies.