When, to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon that an ignorant and helpless creature shall be sacrificed, it is an easy matter to pick up sticks enough from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.

I am persuaded that every time a man smiles - but much more so when he laughs - it adds something to this fragment of life.

Plutarch has a fine expression, with regard to some woman of learning, humility, and virtue;--that her ornaments were such as might be purchased without money, and would render any woman's life both glorious and happy.

Before an affliction is digested, consolation ever comes too soon; and after it is digested, it comes too late.

God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb.

There is such a torture, happily unknown to ancient tyranny, as talking a man to death. Marcus Aurelius advises to assent readily to great talkers--in hopes, I suppose, to put an end to the argument.

...beauty, like truth, never is so glorious as when it goes the plainest.