Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood?

A life in harmony with nature, the love of truth and virtue, will purge the eyes to understanding her text.

The Frenchman invented the ruffle; the Englishman added the shirt.

A skilful man reads his dreams for his selfknowledge; yet not the details, but the quality.

A man is known by the books he reads, by the company he keeps, by the praise he gives, by his dress, by his tastes, by his distastes, by the stories he tells, by his gait, by the notion of his eye, by the look of his house, of his chamber; for nothing on earth is solitary but every thing hath affinities infinite.

When I behold a rich landscape, it is less to my purpose to recite correctly the order and superposition of the strata, than to know why all thought of multitude is lost in a tranquil sense of unity.

Our relations to each other are oblique and casual.