It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.

Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

The first requisite of style, not only in rhetoric, but in all compositions, is perspicuity.

Curiosity is as much the parent of attention, as attention is of memory.

When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.

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

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.