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

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good, but for neglecting his neighbor's.

Men are like sheep, of which a flock is more easily driven than a single one.

The attendant on William Rufus, who discharged at a deer an arrow, which glanced against a tree and killed the king, was no murderer, because he had no such design. And, on the other hand, a man who should lie in wait to assassinate another, and pull the trigger of a gun with that intent, would be morally a murderer, not the less though the gun should chance to miss fire.

In our judgment of human transactions, the law of optics is reversed, we see most dimly the objects which are close around us.

The love of admiration leads to fraud, much more than the love of commendation; but, on the other hand, the latter is much more likely to spoil our: good actions by the substitution of an inferior motive.