Nature always wears the colors of the spirit. To a man laboring under calamity the heat of his own fire hath sadness in it. Then there is a kind of contempt of the landscape felt by him who has just lost by death a dear friend. The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population.

No man can quite emancipate himself from his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the religion, the politics, usages, and arts, of his times shall have no share.

I hate the prostitution of the name of friendship to signify modish and worldly alliances.

In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.

A little praise goes a great ways.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

It is very odd that Nature should be so unscrupulous. She is no saint . . .