Sweet pliability of man's spirit, that can at once surrender itself to illusions, which cheat expectation and sorrow of their weary moments! - long - long since had ye numbered out my days, had I not trod so great a part of them upon this enchanted ground. When my way is too rough for my feet, or too steep for my strength, I get off it, to some smooth velvet path which fancy has scattered over with rose-buds of delights; and have taken a few turns on it, come back strengthened and refreshed.

There are a thousand unnoticed openings, continued my father, which let penetrating eye at once into a man's soul; and I maintain it, added he, that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room, --or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.

Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world - though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst - the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!

So much of motion, is so much of life, and so much of joy, and to stand still, or get on but slowly, is death and the devil.

I live in a constant endeavor to fence against the infirmities of ill health, and other evils of life, by mirth; being firmly persuaded that every time a man smiles, but much more when he laughs, it adds some thing to his fragment of life.

The most accomplished way of using books is to serve them as some people do lords; learn their titles and then brag of their acquaintance.

I once asked a hermit in Italy how he could venture to live alone, in a single cottage, on the top of a mountain, a mile from any habitation? He replied, that Providence was his next-door neighbor.