Religion which lays so many restraints upon us, is a troublesome companion to those who will lay no restraints upon themselves.

When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!

How frequently is the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or shrug! How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped With the imputation of proceeding from bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!

I have so great a contempt and detestation for meanness, that I could sooner make a friend of one who had committed murder, than of a person who could be capable, in any instance, of the former vice. Under meanness, I comprehend dishonesty; under dishonesty, ingratitude; under ingratitude, irreligion; and under this latter, every species of vice and immorality in human nature.

Lessons of wisdom have the most power over us when they capture the heart through the groundwork of a story, which engages the passions.

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.

So that the life of a writer, whatever he might fancy to the contrary, was not so much a state of composition, as a state of warfare; and his probation in it, precisely that of any other man militant upon earth,--both depending alike, not half so much upon the degrees of his WIT--as his RESISTANCE.