If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster.

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, and two minds conscious of the same thought, but as long as it remains unspoken their familiar talk flows quietly over the hidden idea.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.

There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.