Misery and ignorance are always the cause of great evils. Misery is easily excited to anger, and ignorance soon yields to perfidious counsels.

Religion contracts the circle of our pleasures, but leaves it wide enough for her votaries to expatiate in.

Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them.

To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

The end of a man's life is often compared to the winding up of a well written play, where the principal persons still act in character, whatever the fate in which they undergo.

It was a saying of an ancient philosopher, which I find some of our writers have ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, who perhaps might have taken occasion to repeat it, that a good face is a letter of recommendation.