Ethical maxims are bandied about as a sort of current coin of discourse, and, being never melted down for use, those that are of base metal are never detected.

Neither human applause nor human censure is to be taken as the best of truth; but either should set us upon testing ourselves.

It is folly to shiver over last year's snow.

It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.

Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.

Never argue at the dinner table, for the one who is not hungry gets the best of the argument.

It is a good plan, with a young person of a character to be much affected by ludicrous and absurd representations, to show him plainly by examples that there is nothing which may not be thus represented. He will hardly need to be told that everything is not a mere joke.