The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

Magnanimity is above circumstance; and any virtue which depends on that is more of constitution than of principle.

Imparting knowledge is only lighting other men's candles at our lamp without depriving ourselves of any flame.

National antipathy is the basest, because the most illiberal and illiterate of all prejudices.

Any base heart can devise means of vileness, and affix the ugly shapings of its own fancy to the actions of those around him; but it requires loftiness of mind, and the heaven-born spirit of virtue, to imagine greatness where it is not, and to deck the sordid objects of nature in the beautiful robes of loveliness and light.

The doubts of love are never to be wholly overcome; they grow with its various anxieties, timidities, and tenderness, and are the very fruits of the reverence in which the admired object is beheld.

Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.