The road to heaven lies as near by water as by land.

Avoid all affectation and singularity. What is according to nature is best, and what is contrary to it is always distasteful. Nothing is graceful that is not our own.

By reading a man does, as it were, antedate his life, and make himself contemporary with the ages past; and this way of running up beyond one's nativity is better than Plato's pre-existence.

There are few things reason can discover with so much certainty and ease as its own insufficiency.

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.

Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.

People's opinions of themselves are legible in their countenances.