It is an awful, an appalling thought, that we may be, this moment and every moment, in the presence of malignant spirits.

A certain class of novels may with propriety be called fables.

Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.

Sophistry, like poison, is at once detected and nauseated, when presented to us in a concentrated form; but a fallacy which, when stated barely in a few sentences, would not deceive a child, may deceive half the world, if diluted in a quarto volume.

Good manners are a part of good morals.

Man, considered not merely as an organized being, but as a rational agent and a member of society, is perhaps the most wonderfully contrived, and to us the most interesting specimen of Divine wisdom that we have any knowledge of.

To be always thinking about your manners is not the way to make them good; the very perfection of manners is not to think about yourself.