Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings.

A reader seldom peruses a book with pleasure until he knows whether the writer of it be a black man or a fair man, of a mild or choleric disposition, married or a bachelor.

A man improves more by reading the story of a person eminent for prudence and virtue, than by the finest rules and precepts of morality.

The friendships of the world are oft confederacies in vice, or leagues of pleasures.

Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its objects at the greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated with its proper enjoyments.

To look upon the soul as going on from strength to strength, to consider that she is to shine forever with new accessions of glory, and brighten to all eternity; that she will be still adding virtue to virtue, and knowledge to knowledge,--carries in it something wonderfully agreeable to that ambition which is natural to the mind of man.

Encourage innocent amusement.