Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.

As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted; as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.

Great affectation and great absence of it are at first sight very similar.

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

It may be said, almost without qualification, that true wisdom consists in the ready and accurate perception of analogies. Without the former quality, knowledge of the past is unobstructive: without the latter it is deceptive.

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

The more secure we feel against our liability to any error to which, in fact, we are liable, the greater must be our danger of falling into it.