When the cup of any sensual pleasure is drained to the bottom, there is always poison in the dregs.

However you disguise slavery, it is slavery still. Its chains, though wreathed with roses, not only fasten on the body but rivet on the mind.

Bright was the summer of 1296. The war which had desolated Scotland was then at an end.

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.

Happiness is not perfected until it is shared.

He that easily believes rumors has the principle within him to augment rumors. It is strange to see the ravenous appetite with which some devourers of character and happiness fix upon the sides of the innocent and unfortunate.

There is nothing so clear-sighted and sensible as a noble mind in a low estate.