We prefer people who are trying to imitate us more than those who are trying to equal us. This is because imitation is a sign of esteem, but the desire to equal others is a sign of envy.

Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.

It is an admirable skill to able to sweeten a refusal with civil words which atone for the favor which we are not able to grant.

Just as there is no action weaker or more unreasonable than to submit one's judgment to another's, where there is no advantage to oneself, so also there is nothing greater or wiser than to place oneself unquestioningly under God's judgment by believing in every word He speaks.

The foolish acts of others ought to serve more as a lesson to us than an occasion to laugh at those who commit them.

All the great amusements are dangerous for the Christian life.

It is neither a great praise nor a great blame when people say a tendency is in or out of fashion. If a tendency is as it should be at one time, it is always as it should be.