Romance and novel paint beauty in colors more charming than nature, and describe a happiness that humans never taste. How deceptive and destructive are those pictures of consummate bliss!

The volumes of antiquity, like medals, may very well serve to amuse the curious, but the works of the moderns, like the current coin of a kingdom, are much better for immediate use.

Politics resemble religion; attempting to divest either of ceremony is the most certain mode of bringing either into contempt.

With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.

Logicians have but ill defined As rational the human mind; Reason, they say, belongs to man, But let them prove it if they can.

I have visited many countries, and have been in cities without number, yet never did I enter a town which could not produce ten or twelve little great men; all fancying themselves known to the rest of the world, and complimenting each other upon their extensive reputation.

Error is ever talkative.