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.

Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser.

Whether dark presages of the night proceed from any latent power of the soul during her abstraction, or from any operation of subordinate spirits, has been a dispute.

Music, among those who were styled the chosen people, was a religious art.

It is the privilege of posterity to set matters right between those antagonists who, by their rivalry for greatness, divided a whole age.

There is nothing which we receive with so much reluctance as advice.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.