Praise has different effects, according to the mind it meets with; it makes a wise man modest, but a fool more arrogant, turning his weak brain giddy.

Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer--it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend.

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed up in these two - common sense and perseverance.

Gold is the fool's curtain, which hides all his defects from the world.

He who would be singular in his apparel had need have something superlative to balance that affectation.

God has made no one absolute.

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man.