It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.

Virtue knows to a farthing what it has lost by not having been vice.

Letters to absence can a voice impart, And lend a tongue when distance gags the heart.

We often repent of our first thoughts, and scarce ever of our second.

Art is the filigrain of a little mind, and is twisted and involved and curled, but would reach farther if laid out in a straight line.

He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul.

I look upon paradoxes as the impotent efforts of men who, not having capacity to draw attention and celebrity from good sense, fly to eccentricities to make themselves noted.