Our admiration of a famous man lessens upon our nearer acquaintance with him; and we seldom hear of a celebrated person without a catalogue of some notorious weaknesses and infirmities.

Mirth is like a flash of lightning, that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment; cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

There is not a more melancholy object than a man who has his head turned with religious enthusiasm.

Good nature will always supply the absence of beauty; but beauty cannot supply the absence of good nature.

The greatest sweetener of human life is friendship.

No man writes a book without meaning something, though he may not have the faculty of writing consequentially and expressing his meaning.

Charity is the perfection and ornament of religion.