Hail! the small courtesies of life, for smooth do ye make the road of it, like grace and beauty, which beget inclinations to love at first sight; it is ye who open the door and let the stranger in.

I know as well as any one, [the devil] is an adversary, whom if we resist, he will fly from us--but I seldom resist him at all; from a terror, that though I may conquer, I may still get a hurt in the combat--soinstead of thinking to make him fly, I generally fly myself.

It is not in the power of every one to taste humor, however he may wish it; it is the gift of God! and a true feeler always brings half the entertainment along with him.

The loneliness is the mother of wisdom.

Certainly it was ordained as a scourge upon the pride of human wisdom, that the wisest of us all, should thus outwit ourselves, and eternally forego our purposes in the intemperate act of pursuing them.

Simplicity is the great friend to nature, and if I would be proud of anything in this silly world, it should be of this honest alliance.

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.