Among the several kinds of beauty, the eye takes most delight in colors.

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties, and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul.

Must one rash word, the infirmity of age, throw down the merit of my better years?

The soul, considered with its Creator, is like one of those mathematical lines that may draw nearer to another for all eternity without a possibility of touching it; and can there be a thought so transporting as to consider ourselves in these perpetual approaches to Him, who is not only the standard of perfection, but of happiness?

The first of all virtues is innocence; the next is modesty. If we banish modesty out of the world, she carries away with her half the virtue that is in it.

Man is distinguished from all other creatures by the faculty of laughter.

I have often thought, says Sir Roger, it happens very well that Christmas should fall out in the middle of Winter.