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.

none are fit judges of greatness but those who are capable of it.

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

Happiness is a sunbeam which may pass through a thousand bosoms without losing a particle of its original ray; nay, when it strikes on a kindred heart, like the converged light on a mirror, it reflects itself with redoubled brightness. It is not perfected till it is shared.

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

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.

we never know the blessings bestowed on us until we are separated from the possession of them.