Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.

Some persons follow the dictates of their conscience only in the same sense in which a coachman may be said to follow the horses he is driving.

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.

An instinct is a blind tendency to some mode of action, independent of any consideration, on the part of the agent, of the end to which the action leads.

There is no right faith in believing what is true, unless we believe it because it is true.

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

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.