To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.

Learning gives us a fuller conviction of the imperfections of our nature; which one would think, might dispose us to modesty.

He that would be a master must draw from the life as well as copy from originals, and join theory and experience together.

Goodness is generous and diffusive; it is largeness of mind, and sweetness of temper,--balsam in the blood, and justice sublimated to a richer spirit.

Temperance keeps the senses clear and unembarrassed, and makes them seize the object with more keenness and satisfaction. It appears with life in the face, and decorum in the person; it gives you the command of your head, and secures your health, and preserves you in a condition for business.

True courage is the result of reasoning. A brave mind is always impregnable. Resolution lies more in the head than in the veins, and a just sense of honor and of infamy, of duty and of religion, will carry us farther than all the force of mechanism.

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from being a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, compose our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of the living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.