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

Heroes are a mischievous race.

Perpetual pushing and assurance put a difficulty out of countenance and make a seeming difficulty gives way.

Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature.

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

Conscience and covetousness are never to be reconciled; like fire and water they always destroy each other, according to the predominancy of the element.

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.