Ye whose clay-cold heads and luke-warm hearts can argue down or mask your passions--tell me, what trespass is it that man should have them?... If nature has so wove her web of kindness, that some threads of love and desire are entangled with the piece--must the whole web be rent in drawing them out?

Alas! if the principles of contentment are not within us, the height of station and worldly grandeur will as soon add a cubit to a man's stature as to his happiness.

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.

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.

Human nature is the same in all professions.

If there is an evil in this world, it is sorrow and heaviness of heart. The loss of goods, of health, of coronets and mitres, is only evil as they occasion sorrow; take that out, the rest is fancy, and dwelleth only in the head of man.

For I begin with writing the first sentence, — and trusting to Almighty God for the second.