A cloudy day or a little sunshine have as great an influence on many constitutions as the most recent blessings or misfortunes.

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

A solid and substantial greatness of soul looks down with neglect on the censures and applauses of the multitude.

One would wonder to hear skeptical men disputing for the reason of animals, and telling us it is only our pride and prejudices that will not allow them the use of that faculty. Reason shows itself in all occurrences of life; whereas the brute makes no discovery of such a talent, but in what immediately regards his own preservation, or the continuance of his species. Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. Take a brute out of his instinct, and you find him wholly deprived of understanding.

I consider time as an in immense ocean, in which many noble authors are entirely swallowed up.

Music, when thus applied, raises noble hints in the mind of the hearer, and fills it with great conceptions. It strengthens devotion, and advances praise into rapture.

They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.